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Letterpress printed save the dates for Sarah and Aaron. Simple, typographic layout with just a little texture and a waxed linen knot.
This is a creative commons image, which you may freely use by linking to this page. Please respect the photographer and his work.
[This set has 11 images] The restored Esso gas/service station in Mena, Arkansas dates from 1928 (although the National Register nomination form gives the date as 1948). Just down the block from the Studebaker Showroom (see my album at www.flickr.com/photos/universalpops/albums/72157710986387192 ) The Esso station and the showroom provide an interesting glimpse into the Art Moderne style of commercial architecture. Built of concrete blocks, the Esso station has stucco on the facades. The canopy is curved and covers two restored gas pumps, one red and the other blue. Just above the canopy where it meets the main building is a parapet in two stages of elevation. Horizontal lines highlight the upper portion of the building. The front facade has a wooden door with a single rectangular pane, flanked by single pane display windows. Various advertisement stickers are on door and windows. Two recessed bays are to the right of the entrance and contain various antique automobiles. Wood benches under the windows attest to the social nature of the gas station. An Ames hose is mounted on the wall between one of the benches and a repair bay. The tree may or may not be on the property, but in had its appeal in the early morning sunlight. The station's collection of antique cars and automotive memorabilia are not generally open to the public. The structure is a part of the Mena Commercial Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 23, 2009 with a reference number 09000321
The Mena Commercial historic District nomination form can be found at
www.arkansaspreservation.com/National-Register-Listings/P...
The photos in this series:
1) front facade, canopy, pumps, entry and display windows from an angle
2) front facade, canopy, pumps, entry and display windows from another angle
3) a side facade of the building and canopy
4) a view of the corner of the building and side facade
5) restored gas pumps
6) restored gas pumps
7) benches with Coca Cola ads
8) door covered with advertising stickers
9) a display window covered with advertising stickers
10) wall-mounted Ames ReelEasy hose (still made today)
11) a side diversion of a tree next to the station
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
The Wat Phra Kaew (Thai: วัดพระแก้ว, RTGS: Wat Phra Kaeo, IPA: [wát pʰráʔ kɛ̂ːw], English: Temple of the Emerald Buddha; full official name Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram, Thai: วัดพระศรีรัตนศาสดาราม, IPA: [wát pʰráʔ sǐː rát.ta.náʔ sàːt.sa.daː.raːm]) is regarded as the most sacred Buddhist temple (wat) in Thailand. It is a "potent religio-political symbol and the palladium (protective image) of Thai society". It is located in Phra Nakhon District, the historic centre of Bangkok, within the precincts of the Grand Palace.
The main building is the central phra ubosot, which houses the statue of the Emerald Buddha. The legendary history of this Buddha image is traced to India, five centuries after Gautama Buddha attained Nirvana, until it was finally enshrined in Bangkok at the Wat Phra Kaew temple in 1782 during the reign of Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, King Rama I (1782–1809). This marked the beginning of the Chakri Dynasty of Thailand (the present head of the dynasty is Bhumibol Adulyadej, King Rama IX.) The Emerald Buddha, a dark green statue, is in a standing form, about 66 centimetres (26 in) tall, carved from a single jade stone ("emerald" in Thai means deep green colour and not the specific stone). It is carved in the meditating posture in the style of the Lanna school of the northern Thailand. Except for the Thai King, no other person is allowed to touch the statue. The King changes the cloak around the statue three times a year, corresponding to the summer, winter, and rainy seasons, an important ritual performed to usher good fortune to the country during each season.
While legend traces this statue to India, its rich historical records dates its finding in Cambodia in the 15th century, moved to Laos in the 16th century and then to Vientiane where it remained for 215 years, and finally to Thailand in the 18th century. Considering the long history and the prophecy of the sage Nagasena that the Emerald Buddha would bring "prosperity and pre-eminence to each country in which it resides", the Emerald Buddha deified in the Wat Phra Kaew is deeply revered and venerated in Thailand as the protector of the country.
LEGEND
The earliest legend about the iconic image of the Emerald Buddha is that of Nagasena, a saint in India who, with the help of Hindu god Vishnu and demigod Indra, had the Emerald Buddha image made, 500 years after Buddha attained Nirvana. With his psychic powers Nagasena predicted that:
The image of the Buddha is assuredly going to give to religion the most brilliant importance in five lands, that is in Lankadvipa (Sri Lanka), Ramalakka, Dvaravati, Chieng Mai and Lan Chang (Laos).
As regards the historical legend of Wat Phra Kaew, it was originally known as the "Wat Pa Yia", (Bamboo Forest Monastery) in the Chiang Rai province of Northern Thailand. The wat was struck by a lightning storm in 1434, when the octagonal Chedi broke open and revealed the Emerald Buddha (made of Jade), locally known as Phra Kaew Morakot. From there it was moved initially to Vientianne and finally to Bangkok where it was sanctified in the temple called at that time Wat Phra Kaew.
Another legend mentions that attempts made by the King of Chiang Mai to possess the statue after it was found in 1434; these failed thrice because the elephants transporting the statue refused to proceed beyond a crossroad in Lampang. The King of Chiang Mai considered the incident to be a strong divine directive and allowed the Buddha statue to remain in Lampang, where it remained for the next 32 years in an exclusively built temple.
HISTORY
According to legend the Emerald Buddha statue originated in India, however other legends claimm it was originally from first vassal Kingdom of Cambodia. The image disappeared when Burmese raiders sacked Ayuttaya also spelt "Ayudaya" and the image was feared lost.
Continuing with the legend of the saint Nagasena of India, after remaining in Pataliputra (present day Patna) for three hundred years, the Emerald Buddha image was taken to Sri Lanka to save it from a civil war. In 457, King Anuruth of Burma sent a mission to Ceylon with a request for Buddhist scriptures and the Emerald Buddha, in order to promote Buddhism in his country. These requests were granted, but the ship lost its way in a storm during the return voyage and landed in Cambodia. When the Thais captured Angkor Wat in 1432 (following the ravage of the bubonic plague), the Emerald Buddha was taken to Ayutthaya, Kamphaeng Phet, Laos and finally Chiang Rai, where the ruler of the city hid it. Cambodian historians recorded capture of the Buddha statue in their famous Preah Ko Preah Keo legend.
The Emerald Buddha reappeared in a chance discovery in Chiang Rai, Lanna in 1434, after a lightning storm struck a temple. The Buddha statue fell down and was chipped. The storm had washed away some of its mud plaster covering (mud coat or stucco used to be laid to safeguard valuable Buddha images). The monks, after removing the plaster around the statue, discovered that the image was a perfectly made Buddha image from a solid piece of Jade, a precious stone. After that, the image moved around a few temples in Lanna. It was then moved to Chiang Rai, then Chiang Mai, from where it was removed by prince Chao Chaiyasetthathirat to Luang Prabang, when his father died and he ascended the throne of both Lanna and Lan Xang, in 1551. The statue remained there for twelve years. King Chaiyasetthathirat then shifted it to his new capital of Lan Xang in Vientiane in the 1560s. He took the Emerald Buddha with him and thereafter the image remained in Vientiane for two hundred and fifteen years until 1778. In the early 18th century, the Kingdom of Lan Xang was divided into 3 different kingdoms; Vientiane, Luang Prabang, and Champassak.
King Taksin of Thonburi (Siam, now Thailand) was crowned king in 1768 (he had defeated the Burmese), reigned for fifteen years, uniting the kingdom and expanding its territorial jurisdiction. Chao Phya Chakri (Chakri is a title) a renowned army general and associate of Taksin, in 1778, defeated the Vientiane and shifted the Emerald Buddha from Vientiane to Thonburi where it remained till Taksin's death. It was then installed in a shrine close to Wat Arun. Chroniclers mention that Taksin had become senile and consequently he was put to death by Chao Phra Chakri. Chao Phra Chakri then took over the reins of the Rattanakosin Kingdom. He adopted the title Rama I and shifted his capital across the Menam Chao Phra river to its present location in Bangkok. The Emerald Buddha was also moved across the river with pomp and pageantry and installed in the temple of Wat Phra Keo. It resides in the Wat Phra Kaew in the precincts of the Grand Palace. Rama I, after he moved the capital from Thonburi to Bangkok, had the temple consecrated in 1784. The King had ordered replacing an old temple at this site by building a new temple as part the construction of his new capital. It was built as an exclusive temple complex for the display of holy buildings, statues, and pagodas. The formal name of Wat Phra Kaeo is Phra Sri Rattana Satsadaram, which means "the residence of the Holy Jewel Buddha."
Phibunsongkhram, a World War II hero of Thailand, the Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces in 1941 had signed a formal treaty of alliance between the two Buddhist countries of Thailand and Japan in the divine presence of the Emerald Buddha in the wat. He had royal ambitions of shifting the capital from Bangkok to his home town Phetchabun along with the Emerald Buddha. He later gave up his plan under public pressure and also fear of bombing during the war.
However, there are also claims that the statue was originally in Sri Lanka. Art historians of Thailand claim that it was carved in the 14th century in Thailand only. All these theories are discounted on the grounds that none of the historians could get a close look at the statue.
ARCHITECTURE
Wat Phra Kaeo has a plethora of buildings within the precincts of the Grand Palace, which covers a total area of over 94.5 hectares. It has over 100 buildings with “200 years royal history and architectural experimentation” linked to it. The architectural style is named as Rattanakosin style (old Bangkok style). The main temple of the Emerald Buddha is very elegantly decorated and similar to the temple in ancient capital of Ayudhya. The roof is embellished with polished orange and green tiles, the pillars are inlaid in mosaic and the pediments are made of rich marble. The Emerald Buddha is deified over an elevated altar surrounded by large gilded decorations. While the upper part of this altar was part of the original construction, the base was added by King Rama III. Two images of the Buddha, which represent the first two kings of the Chakri dynasty, flank the main image. Over the years, the temple has retained its original design. However, minor improvements have been effected after its first erection during Rama I's reign; wood-work of the temple was replaced by King Rama III and King Chulalongkorn; during King Mongkut's reign, the elegant doors and windows and the copper plates on the floor were additions, Rama III refurbished the wall painting (indicative of the universe according to Buddhist cosmology) and several frescoes that display the various stages of the Buddha's life; three chambers were added on the western side by King Mongkut; in the chamber known as 'Phra Kromanusorn' at the northern end, images of Buddha have been installed in honour of the kings of Ayudya; and in the 19th century, In Khong, a famous painter executed the wall murals. The entry to the temple is from the third gate from the river pier.
The entrance is guarded by a pair of yakshis (mythical giants – 5 metres high statues). The eponymous image Buddha in brilliant green colour is 66 centimetres in height with a lap width of 48.3 centimetres. It is carved in a yogic position, known as Virasana (a meditation pose commonly seen in images in Thailand and also in South India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia). The pedestal on which the Emerald Buddha deified is decorated with Garuda (the mythical half-man half-bird form, a steed of Rama, who holds his mortal enemy Naga the serpent in his legs) motifs It is central to Thai Buddhism. The image made with a circular base has a smooth top-knot that is finished with a "dulled point marking at the top of the image". A third eye made in gold is inset over the elevated eyebrows of the image. The image appears divine and composed, with the eyes cast downward. The image has a small nose and mouth (mouth closed) and elongated ears. The hands are seen on the lap with palms facing upwards.
The entire complex, including the temples, is bounded by a compound wall which is one of the most prominent part of the wat is about 2 kilometres length. The compound walls are decorated with typically Thai murals, based on the Indian epic Ramayana. In Thai language these murals are known to form the Ramakian, the Thai national epic, which was written during the reign of Rama I. The epic stories formed the basic information to draw the paintings during the reign of King Rama I (1782–1809). These paintings are refurbished regularly. The murals, in 178 scenes, starting with the north gate of the temple illustrates the complete epic story of Ramayana sequentially, in a clockwise direction covering the entire compound wall. The murals serve to emphasise human values of honesty, faith, and devotion.
There are twelve salas that were built by Rama I, around the temple. They house interesting artefacts of regions such as Cambodia and Java. One of these salas had an inscription of Ramkamhaeng, which was shifted, in 1924, to the National Library. During the reign of King Mongkut, the Phra Gandharara – small chapel on the southwest corner – and a tall belfry were new additions.
WORSHIP & CEREMONIES
Early in the Bangkok period, the Emerald Buddha used to be taken out of its temple and paraded in the streets to relieve the city and countryside of various calamities (such as plague and cholera). However, this practice was discontinued during Rama IV's reign as it was feared that the image could get damaged during the procession and also a practical line of thinking that Rama IV held "that diseases are caused by germs, not by evil spirits or the displeasure of the Buddha". The image also marks the changing of the seasons in Thailand, with the king presiding over the seasonal ceremonies.
Like many other Buddha statues in Thailand, the Emerald Buddha is dressed in a seasonal costume. It is a significant ritual held at this temple. In this ritual, dress of the deity is changed three times a year to correspond to the seasons. In summer it is a pointed crown of gold and jewels, and a set of jewelled ornaments that adorns the image from the shoulders to the ankles. In winter, a meshed dressing gown or drapery made of gold beads, which covered from the neck down like a poncho is used. During the rainy months, a top-knot headdress studded with gold, enamel and sapphires; the gold attire in the rainy season is draped over the left shoulder of the deity, only with the right shoulder left bare while gold ornaments embellish the image up to the ankles. The astrological dates for the ritual ceremonies, at the changing of the seasons, followed are in the 1st Waning Moon of Lunar Months 4, 8 and 12 (around March, July and November). The costume change ritual is performed by the Thai king who is the highest master of ceremonies for all Buddhist rites. On each occasion, the king himself "cleans the image by wiping away any dust that has collected and changing the headdress of the image". Then a king's royal attendant climbs up and performs the elaborate ritual of changing garments of the image as the king is chanting prayers to the deity. On this occasion, the king sprinkles water over the monks and the faithful who have assembled to witness the unique ritual and seeks blessings of the deity for good fortune during the upcoming season. The two sets of clothing not in use at any given time are kept on display in the nearby Pavilion of Regalia, Royal Decorations and Coins in the precincts of the Grand Palace. While Rama I initiated this ritual for the hot season and the rainy season, Rama III introduced the ritual for the winter season. The robes, which the image adorns, represents that of monks and King's depending on the season, a clear indication of highlighting its symbolic role "as Buddha and the King", which role is also enjoined on the Thai King who formally dresses the Emerald Buddha image.
A ceremony that is observed in the wat is the Chakri Day (begun on April 6, 1782), a national holiday to honour founding of the Chakri dynasty. On this day, the king attends the ceremony. The present king Rama IX, with his Queen, and entourage of the royal family, the Prime Minister, officials in the Ministry of Defence, and other government departments, first offer prayers at the Emerald Buddha temple. This is followed by visit to the pantheon to pay homage to the images of past Chakri rulers that are installed there.
The coronation ceremony, which marks the crowning of the king, is an important event of the Chakri dynasty. One such recent event took place when the present Rama IX was crowned the King. On this occasion, the King came to the Chapel Royal- the Wat Phra Keo – in a procession wearing a 'Great Crown'. After entering the chapel, the king made offerings of gold and silver flowers to the deity and also lighted candles. He also paid homage to the images of Buddha that represented the past kings of the dynasty. In the presence of assembled elite clergy of the kingdom, he took a formal vow of his religion and his steadfastness to 'Defend the Faith'.
RULES OF ENTRY & CONDUCT
The sacred temples in Thailand follow a dress code, which is strictly followed. Men must wear long pants and sleeved shirts and shoes; women must wear long skirts. Visitors who arrive dressed otherwise may rent appropriate clothing items at the entry area of the temple. It is compulsory to remove the shoes before entering the temple, as a sign of respect of the Buddha, as is the practice in all other temples in Thailand. While offering prayers before the Buddha image, the sitting posture should avoid any offensive stretching of feet towards the deity; the feet should be tucked in towards the back.
OTHER MONUMENTS
While the surrounding portico of the shrine is an example of Thai craftsmanship, the perimeter of the temple complex has 12 open pavilions. These were built during the reign of Rama I.There is plethora of monuments in the temple complex. These are:
GRAND PALACE
The former residence of the King, the Grand Palace, adjoins the temple. The King makes use of this Grand Palace for ceremonial functions such as the Coronation Day. The King’s present residence is to the north of this Grand Palace and is known as the Chitlada Palace. The four structures surrounding the temple have history of their own. At the eastern end is the Borombhiman Hall (built in French architectural design), which was the residence of King Rama VI, now used as guest house for visiting foreign dignitaries. It has the dubious distinction of having been used as the operational headquarters and residence of General Chitpatima who attempted a coup, in 1981. The building to the west is the Amarindra hall, earlier a hall of Justice, now used for formal ceremonies. The Chakri Mahaprasat is the largest hall in the Grand Palace, built in 1882 by British architects, the architecture of which is fusion of Italian renaissance and Traditional Thai architecture. This style is called farang sai chada, (meaning: "Westerner wearing a Thai crown") as each wing has a shrine (mandap) crowned by a spire. Ashes of the Chakri kings (five ancestors) are enshrined in the largest of these shrines, also known as the pantheons, that were rebuilt after a fire in 1903 during Rama IV's reign. Ashes of the Chakri princess who could not become kings are enshrined in an adjoining hall. The throne room and the reception hall are on the first floor, while the ground floor houses a collection of weapons. The inner palace had the King’s harem (the practice was discontinued during King Rama VI's time who decreed the one wife rule), which was guarded by well trained female guards. Another hall in the palace is the 'Dusit hall' in Ratanokosin-style, which runs from east to west, which was initially an audience hall but now converted into a funerary hall for the Royal family. Royal family corpses are kept here for one year before they are cremated in a nearby field. There is also a garden which was laid during rama IV's reign. The garden depicts a "Thai mountain-and-woods-fable" mountain scenes where the coming of age ritual of shaving the topknot of the Prince is performed.
PAGODAS
The temple grounds also depict three pagodas to its immediate north, which represent the changing centres of Buddhist influence. One such shrine to the west of the temple is the Phra Si Ratana Chedi, a 19th-century stupa built in Sri Lankan style enshrining ashes of the Buddha.
LIBRARY
Rama I also built a library in Thai style, in the middle of the complex, known as the "Phra Mondop". The library houses an elegantly carved Ayutthaya-style mother-of-pearl doors, bookcases with the Tripitaka (sacred Buddhist manuscripts), human-and dragon-headed nagas (snakes), and images of Chakri kings.
During the 19th century, the Royal Pantheon was built in Khmer style to the east of the temple, which is kept open for only one day in year, in the month of October to commemorate the founding of the Chakri dynasty.
MODEL OF ANGKOR WAT
The temple complex also contains a model of Angkor Wat (the most sacred of all Cambodian shrines). In 1860, King Mongkut ordered his generals to lead 2,000 men to dismantle Angkor Wat and take it to Bangkok. Modern scholars suggested that the king wanted to show that Siam was still in control of Cambodia, as France was seeking to colonise Cambodia at that time. However, the king's order could not be fulfilled. A royal chronicle written by Lord Thiphakorawong (Kham Bunnag), then foreign minister, recorded that many Thai men fell ill after entering Cambodian wilderness. The chronicle also stated that forest-dwelling Khmer people ambushed the Thai army, killing many leading generals. King Mongkut then ordered the construction of the model within Wat Phra Kaew, instead of the real Angkor Wat that could not be brought to Bangkok. Mongkut died before he could see the model. Its construction was complete in the reign of his son, Chulalongkorn.
HERMIT STATUE
A hermit's bronze image, which is believed to have healing powers, is installed in a sala on the western side of the temple. It is near the entry gate. It is a black stone statue, considered a patron of medicine, before which relatives of the sick and infirm pay respects and make offerings of joss sticks, fruit, flowers, and candles.
NINE TOWERS
On the eastern side of the temple premises there are nine towers. They were erected during the reign of Rama I. Each tower is affixed with glazed tiles, with different colours for each tower, supposed to denote colours of the nine planets.
ELEPHANT STAUES
Statues of elephants, which symbolize independence and power, are seen all around the complex. As Thai kings fought wars mounted on elephants, it has become customary for parents to make their children circumambulate the elephant three times with the belief that that it would bring them strength. The head of an elephant statue is also rubbed for good luck; this act of the people is reflected in the smoothness of the surface of elephant statues here.
WIKIPEDIA
The history of Mussoorie dates back to 1825 when Captain Young, an adventurous British military officer, together with a Mr. Shore, the resident Superintendent of Revenues at Dehradun explored the present site and jointly constructed a shooting lodge. This laid the foundation of this holiday resort which now has few rivals.
The name Mussoorie is often attributed to a derivation of 'mansoor', a shrub which is indigenous to the area. The town is in fact often referred to as 'Mansoori' by locals.
The main promenade in Mussoorie is called, as in other hill stations, the Mall. In Mussoorie, the Mall stretches from Picture Palace at its eastern end to the Public Library (shortened to 'Library') at its western end. During the British Raj, signs on the Mall expressly stated: "Indians and Dogs Not Allowed"; racist signs of this type were commonplace in hill stations, which were founded 'by and for' the British. Motilal Nehru, the father of Jawahar Lal Nehru, deliberately broke this rule every day whenever he was in Mussoorie, and would pay the fine. The Nehru family, including Nehrus's daughter Indira (later Indira Gandhi) were frequent visitors to Mussoorie in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. They also spent much time in nearby Dehradun, where Nehru's sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit ultimately settled full-time.
In April 1959, after fleeing Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama established the Tibetan Government of Exile in Mussoorie. The Government of Tibet in exile eventually moved to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. The first Tibetan school was established in Mussoorie in 1960. Tibetans settled mainly in Happy Valley in Mussoorie. Today, some 5,000 Tibetans live in Mussoorie.
Now, Mussoorie suffers from over-development of hotels and tourist lodges, given its relative proximity to Delhi, Ambala and Chandigarh, and has serious problems of garbage collection, water scarcity and parking shortages, especially during the summer tourist season. Landour, Jharipani and Barlowganj have fewer such problems.
These photos are a first attempt at capturing some of the decorations around Leeds. I would like to go back with a better camera and a tripod and do more at some point.
CC0 To the extent possible under law, Ben Dalton has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this photo.
You can link back to this page if you would like to credit Ben for taking the photo, but you don't have to. However, if you would like to embed the copy of this photo that is hosted on Flickr in outside web sites, you must follow Flickr's hosting guidelines.
As far as I am aware, the subject of this photo (apart from any trademarks) is also in the public domain.
featured: Matthew Brown
Exhibition Dates: January 15 – 28, 2021 in the Artlab Gallery and virtually
Every few years, the Artlab Gallery at Western University hosts a Faculty and Staff exhibition. These exhibitions are important opportunities for fostering a sense of community in the Visual Arts Department: students are able to see their instructors and mentors at work, and colleagues have a chance to share in each other's research. 2020 was a year like no other, and so the Artlab is leaning into the present with a collective address to this moment of separate togetherness. "Distance makes the heart grow weak" invites faculty, staff and graduate students to speak to how they've been experiencing the last year. It prompts participants to explore and express how isolation has shifted our focus, our research and art practices, as well as our forms of connecting with one another. The exhibition is also an opportunity for participating artists and researchers to show flexibility (and inherently, optimism) despite the high strangeness we’re all currently experiencing. In this time of shared solitude—unable to walk down halls, knock on studio or office doors, and enjoy quick hellos and impromptu conversations—we'll quote Chris Kraus (quoting Søren Kierkegaard): "art involves reaching through some distance."
Organized by Dickson Bou and Ruth Skinner.
Participants: Cody Barteet; Sarah Bassnett; Dickson Bou with Charlie Egleston & Peter Lebel; Matt W. Brown; Andreas Buchwaldt; Brianne Casey; Jérôme Conquy with Kevin Heslop, Sachiko Murakami, Sile Englert & Ruth Douthwright; Ioana Dragomir; Meghan Edmiston; Soheila Esfahani; Sky Glabush; Anahí González; Philip Gurrey; John Hatch; Tricia Johnson; Iraboty Kazi; Shelley Kopp; Anna Madelska; Patrick Mahon; Jennifer Martin; Linda Meloche; David Merritt; Ana Moyer; Dong-Kyoon Nam; Kim Neudorf; Katie Oates; Sasha Opeiko with Martin Stevens; Michelle Paterok; Kirsty Robertson; Geordie Shepherd; Andrew Silk; Ashley Snook; Christine Sprengler; Michelle Wilson with Bridget Koza,Sophie Wu, & Azadeh Odlins; Jessica Woodward
The promotional graphic for "Distance makes the heart grow weak" cites the short film, "Extraordinary Measures," by Sasha Opeiko and Martin Stevens, featured in the exhibition.
Given Ontario's recent stay-at-home order, the exhibition will be released in a virtual format on Friday, January 15th. Throughout the course of the exhibition, Artlab will publish short video features from participating artists and researchers.
Visit the Artlab Gallery: www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/exhibition_archive/20202021.htm...
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2021; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Italian Landscape
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 61
•Date: 1790
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions:
oOverall: 103.5 × 130.4 cm (40¾ × 51 5/16 in.)
oFramed: 122.2 × 146.7 × 6.9 cm (48⅛ × 57¾ × 2 11/16 in.)
•Credit Line: Paul Mellon Collection
•Accession Number: 1983.1.47
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Joseph Wright, British, 1734-1797
Overview
Wright’s artistic interests varied widely, ranging from portraiture and scientific topics in his early “candlelight” period to popular subjects, romantic history, literature, and landscapes in later years. This painting dates from the end of Wright’s career. It is a romantic and fantastic blend of his memories of Italy and the countryside of his native Derby.
In the foreground, a rustic figure sits by the side of a rock-strewn path; he is a small, lonely human presence in this broad and arresting view of nature. A path winds above him to the villas in the hills, while to the right the land gives way to a rolling meadow, a still lake, and a distant mountain. In the background great masses of earth rise dramatically, culminating in a long silhouette against the pale blue sky.
Wright’s unorthodox use of color in the cliffs has an expressionistic quality that seems to foreshadow the works of later artists. At a distance from the painting the sharp contrast between the colors emphasizes the geometry of the forms. Viewed closer, the forms begin to flatten out into abstract patterns. While Wright’s vision of nature is romantic in its use of light and color and in its pervasive nostalgic mood, it is also classical in its purity of line and form and in its controlled and balanced composition.
Inscription
•Lower Left: I Wright / Pinx / 1790
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.[1] A.J. Bentley, by 1831;[2] by descent to John Bentley, Esq. [1797-1879], Birch House, near Bolton, Lancashire, and Portland Place, London; his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71); purchased by F.B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Durlacher Brothers, London); sold 11 April 1960 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold 6 July 1960 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[3] gift 1983 to NGA.
[1]According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie’s, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned. (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols., London, 1968: I:260.)
[2]He lent the painting to Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene--Convent of St. Cosimata.
[3]Stockbook no. 3055, Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Associated Names
•Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
•Bentley, A.J.
•Bentley, John
•F.B.
•Mellon, Paul, Mr.
•Mills, Mr.
•Nicolson, Benedict
Exhibition History
•1831—Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English Masters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831, no. 145, as Italian Scene - Convent of St. Cosimata.
•1963—Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222.
•1969—Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repro.
•1986—Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist
•1990—Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. 119, color repro.
•1993—Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting, 1750-1850, Denver Art Museum, 1993-1994, no. 22, repro.
•1999—An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.
Technical Summary
The canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Bibliography
•1968—Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light. 2 vols. London, 1968: 1:92, 260, no. 292; 2:pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” The Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 477, fig. 7.
•1985—European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 440, repro.
•1992—Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 350-352, repro. 351.
•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 153, repro.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 281, no. 228, color repro.
From British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries:
1983.1.47 (2922)
Italian Landscape
•1790
•Oil on Canvas, 103.5 × 130.4 (40¾ × 51⅜)
•Paul Mellon Collection
Inscriptions
•Signed and Dated at Lower Left: I Wright/Pinx/1790
Technical Notes
The canvas is plain woven ; it has been lined. The ground is a smooth proprietary white. The painting is executed in a sophisticated range of techniques. The design has been blocked in with rich fluid paint; this is blended wet into wet in the sky, with thicker whites adding texture and definition. In the foreground and middle ground the base color is modified by a complex series of fluid opaque layers and glazes, with the final detail applied in bright, thick paint; in the mountains the base color of solid, opaque purplish lavender is modified by thin layers of green and bluish gray. The paint surface has been abraded in the mountain on the left side, and has been flattened during lining. There are scattered retouches in the sky. Otherwise the painting is in good condition. The moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.
Provenance
Mr. Mills, Yorkshire.1 A. J. Bentley by 1831 ; by descent to John Bentley [1797-1886], Birch House, near Manchester, and Portland Place, London (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 May 1886, no. 71), bought by F. B. Benedict Nicolson, London, until 1960. (Thos. Agnew & Sons), London, from whom it was purchased August 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
Exhibitions
Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and English M asters, Royal Manchester Institution, 1831,no. 145, as Italian Scene—Convent of St. Cosimata [sic]. Painting in England, 1700-1850: Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1963, no. 39, repro., pl. 222. Joseph Wright of Derby: A Selection of Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969-1970, no. 15, repto. Joseph Wright of Derby, Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, no. H9,colorrepro.
This canvas has been known since at least 1831 as a view of the Convent of San Cosimato, but neither the buildings nor the setting are consistent with Wright’s identified views of this subject.2 Nicolson believed that the picture “must be an imaginary scene, half-English, half-Italian, where Roman villas have incongruously come to settle on the Derbyshire hills. “3 The topography does not suggest the configuration of any actual Italian landscape, and both the hill town and the motif of the seated figure in the foreground are reminiscent of the Gaspardesque. The scene seems to be a combination of memories of Italy and imaginary picturesque elements characteristic of Wright’s late style in landscape—broad, generalized, and frankly decorative. The highly personal treatment of color in the sunlit hills at the center—derived ultimately though it may be from those broad areas of contrasted color characteristic of, for example, the sides of Vesuvius when seen from a distance—has an almost abstract quality: Cummings has compared it to “a Warhol silk-screen.”4
A smaller version with the lighting from the right and differences in detail, notably in the foreground, belongs to the Blaffer Foundation in Houston.5 Butlin has argued that “the subtlety of the observation of the same landscape under different conditions of light surely betokens a real landscape observed by the artist in Italy.”6 However, this is not necessarily the case. Wright’s three views of the actual San Cosimato are admittedly of a real landscape, but they were painted, at the same period as the Washington and Blaffer pictures, under three different conditions of light, surely conditions imagined in the studio for variety’s sake by an artist whose main preoccupation was light.7
Notes
1.According to the catalogue of the Bentley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1886. Nicolson identified Mr. Mills with John Milnes of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who was one of Wright’s principal patrons, but the Washington picture is not identifiable with any picture Milnes is known to have owned (Nicolson 1968, I: 260).
2.Nicolson 1968, I : nos. 262-264; 2: pls. 257, 282, 283.
3.Nicolson 1968, I : 92.
4.Cummings 1971,477.
5.This picture was unknown to scholars before its appearance in an anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 19 July 1978, no. 87, repro.
6.Martin Butlin, Aspects of British Painting 1550-1800: From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1988), 116.
7.Egerton 1990, 191, has independently taken the same view.
References
•1968—Nicolson 1968, I : 92, 260, no. 292; 2: pl. 311.
•1971—Cummings, Frederick. “Joseph Wright at the National Gallery.” AQ 34 (1971): 477, fig. I.
This paya originally dates from 1476. Basically, it's Bagan's Ananda Temple minus the building - four huge buddhas back to back. One of the Buddhas has since been reconstructed.
The Norseman building as a watering hole dates back to the 1500’s when it was known as the Wooden Man Tavern due to a wooden Viking figure on the corner of the street. They are known as The Norseman Temple Bar 1696 as this was the year the premises was First Licenced James Monks owned the establishment in the 1840s. James bonded whiskey for Jameson and they have an original label sent by his great great granddaughter. They still take pride in working with local distillers including Dublin’s own distillery Teeling.The pub originally took the name The Norseman as a nod to the Wooden Man Viking in our own history and the local Viking history from the discovery in the 70’s of Viking ships and artefacts on Wood quay.
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Interested in seeing more of my work? Check out my current photos here nick88msn
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Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with the event, no economic interests and had no other reason for writing about Web Summit other than as a person who has to attend many events for my professional life I found it to be the most meticulously plan and run and intent upon serving its audience of any major event I had attended.
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It dates from the 14/15 century.
The steeple was shielding the sun which caused the lighter highlights around it.
The ruins of St Thomas's Priory, which was dissolved by King Henry 8 in 1537 are nearby.
We stopped by the home of our driver and he served us a bowl of dates.
There were flies all over the place, including on the dates themselves, but I didn't want to be rude so I ate one. Tasted pretty good actually.
No message on the reverse. The SOLIO stamp box dates the card anytime from 1902 to the 1920s, but the field service cap was replaced in 1902 but continued for some years overseas so the photo probably dates from the second half of the the first decade.
The various battalions served all across the empire at this time but this looks as though it was taken in the Middle East, perhaps Egypt.
The photo was badly faded so I've had to enhance it quite a bit.
Celje Castle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Celje Castle (also known as Celje Upper Castle or Old Castle) (Slovene Celjski grad, Celjski zgornji grad or Stari grad) is a castle ruin in Celje, Slovenia, formerly the seat of the Counts of Celje. It stands on three hills to the southeast of Celje, where the river Savinja meanders into the Laško valley. Today, the castle is in the process of being restored. It was once the largest fortification on Slovenian territory.
History
Early history
The earliest reference to Celje Castle dates from 1322 and calls it “purch Cylie”. Later, the castle was known by various names, including “vest Cili” (1341), “castrum Cilie” (1451), “gsloss Obercili” (1468). It is noteworthy that the name “Obercili” - Upper Celje - only appears after the Counts of Celje had died out. Its original name was “grad Celje” (Celje Castle).
The first fortified building on the site (a Romanesque palace) was built in the first half of the 13th century by the Counts of Heunburg from Carinthia on the stony outcrop on the western side of the ridge where the castle stands. It had five sides, or four plus the southern side, which was a natural defence. The first written records of the castle date back to between 1125 and 1137; it was probably built by Count Gunter. In the western section of the castle, there was a building with several floors. Remains of the walls of this palatium have survived. In the eastern section, there was an enclosed courtyard with large water reservoirs. The eastern wall, which protects the castle from its most exposed side, was around three metres thicker than the rest of the curtain wall. The wall was topped with a parapet and protected walkway. This was typical of Ministerialis castles of the time.
Lords of Sanneck and Counts of Celje
The first castle was probably burned and destroyed in the fighting between the Lords of Sanneck and the Lords of Auffenstein. The gateway was later moved from the northern side by freemen loyal to the Lords of Sanneck. They gave the castle a new curtain wall and reinforced this with a tower on the northern side, which guarded the entrance to the inner ward, sometime before 1300. The new wall reached from a natural cliff in the east to the remains of the earlier wall in the northeast. The entrance was moved to the southern side, where it still is today.
In 1333, the castle came into the possession of the Lords of Sanneck, who from 1341 onward were the Counts of Celje. They set about transforming the fortress into a comfortable living quarter and their official residence. Around 1400, they added a four-storey tower which was later called Friderikov stolp (Frederick’s tower, from bergfrid, modern German Bergfried, the term for the central tower of a castle in the Middle Ages). On the eastern side of the courtyard, there was a tall, three-story residential tower, which is the best preserved section of the castle after Friderikov stolp. The main residential building (a palatium), which also had rooms for women, stood however in the western section of the castle. This part of the castle ends at the narrow outer ward and is in a state of disrepair. On the southern side of the palatium, there was a tower, known as Andrejev stolp (Andrew’s tower), after the chapel on the ground floor, which was dedicated to Saint Andrew. In the Middle Ages, the castle walls were impenetrable; an attacker would have had to rely on starving the defenders into submission, but a hidden passageway led from the castle to a nearby granary. The Counts of Celje stopped living in the castle in this period, but they stationed a castellan with an armed entourage here.
During an earthquake in 1348, part of the Romanesque palace and the rock on which it stood were destroyed. The ruined section was rebuilt and relocated towards the bailey. In the 15th century, the outer ward was extended on the eastern side of the ridge as far as the rocky outcrop. Here, the wall connected with a powerful, five-sided tower. In the second half of the 16th century, the castle was once again renovated. The walls in the inner and outer wards were made taller, and the bailey was renovated. The modern sections of the walls feature Renaissance-era balistraria.
Holy Roman Empire
The first imperial caretaker, Krištof pl. Ungnad, was named in 1461. The second, Jurij pl. Apfaltrer, was named just two years later. The castle entered the care of Andrej pl. Hohenwart in 1470. When he took it over, he swore to take good care of it and to keep it in a good condition. He carried out this service until his death in 1503. He was succeeded as castle caretaker by Jakob pl. Landau, the government administrator in Upper and Lower Swabia. Landau obtained the position from Emperor Maximilian I, who was at the time still the King of the Romans, for having lent him 10,000 crowns. Landau was still castle caretaker in 1514. Two years later, Bernard Raunacher briefly held this position, but the emperor ordered him to hand authority to Gašper Herbst and to make do with the income generated by Rudolfswert (later Novo Mesto). Other caretakers followed, most of whom were at the same time vicedominus and the administrator of various taxes. The castle’s importance as a fortress rapidly gave way to its economic role.
Celje Castle was not only the most important castle in Slovenia, but in the entire eastern Alps. It covered an area of almost 5500 m². From the ruins that remain and from depictions of the castle that have survived, it is possible to paint a detailed picture of how it once looked. Several new techniques were employed in the castle’s architectural development, which were the model for other castles in the region under Celje’s influence.
The castle began to fall into disrepair shortly after losing its strategic importance. Georg Matthäus Vischer’s depiction of the castle from 1681 shows that Friderikov stolp no longer had a roof at the end of the 17th century. During the renovation of the lower castle (the section closest to the town) in 1748, the castle’s tiled roof was removed. When Count Gaisruck bought the castle in 1755, he removed the roof truss as well. The best stones were then re-used in the construction of the Novo Celje Mansion between Petrovče and Žalec. From this time onward, it was no longer possible to live in the castle, and it slowly turned into a complete ruin. The last residents left the site in 1795.
In 1803, the farmer Andrej Gorišek bought the castle and began to use the site as a quarry.
19th and 20th centuries
In 1846, the governor of the Styria, Count Wickenburg, bought the ruins and donated them to the Styrian estates. In 1871, interest in the ruins began to take hold and in 1882 the Celje museum society began efforts to restore the castle, which continue to this day. During the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the authorities in Maribor left control over the ruins to the local municipality, which made great contributions to the castle's preservation. During World War II, the ruins were abandoned, but reconstruction efforts continued after the war. In the corners of the Friderikov stolp, cement blocks were used to replace missing stones. A proper parking lot was also created in front of the entrance to the castle. On the northern side, the wall was knocked through to create a new side entrance to meet a new route that had been built there (Pelikanova pot).
21st century
The Celje tourist board holds an event entitled "Pod zvezdami Celjanov" ("Under the stars of Celje") at Celje Castle in late summer every year, which features performances and representations of life in the Middle Ages. Music concerts also take place in the castle. Celje Castle is visited by approximately 60,000 people every year.[1] An annual cultural entertainment event, Veronikini večeri, which is named after the character Veronika in the Slovenian opera Veronika Deseniška, also takes place in the castle.[2] The evening features various concerts, theatre performances and other entertainment, and each year the organiser, in collaboration with the municipality of Celje, awards the Veronikina nagrada (prize) for poetry and the Zlatnik poezije (gold medal for poetry). The Veronikini večeri event has been taking place since 1996 and the Veronikina nagrada has equally been awarded since then. The Zlatnik poezije has been awarded since 2004.
Naqsh-e Rustam (Persian:
رستم Naqš-e Rostam) is an ancient necropolis located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, in Pars Province, Iran. It lies a few hundred meters from Naqsh-e Rajab.
The oldest relief at Naqsh-i Rustam is severely damaged and dates to c. 1000 BC. It depicts a faint image of a man with unusual head-gear and is thought to be Elamite in origin. The depiction is part of a larger mural, most of which was removed at the command of Bahram II. The man with the unusual cap gives the site its name, Naqsh-e Rostam, "Picture of Rostam", because the relief was locally believed to be a depiction of the mythical hero Rostam.
Four tombs belonging to Achaemenid kings are carved out of the rock face. They are all at a considerable height above the ground.
The tombs are known locally as the 'Persian crosses', after the shape of the facades of the tombs. The entrance to each tomb is at the center of each cross, which opens onto to a small chamber, where the king lay in a sarcophagus. The horizontal beam of each of the tomb's facades is believed to be a replica of the entrance of the palace at Persepolis.
One of the tombs is explicitly identified by an accompanying inscription to be the tomb of Darius I the Great (c. 522-486 BC). The other three tombs are believed to be those of Xerxes I (c. 486-465 BC), Artaxerxes I (c. 465-424 BC), and Darius II (c. 423-404 BC) respectively. A fifth unfinished one might be that of Artaxerxes III, who reigned at the longest two years, but is more likely that of Darius III (c. 336-330 BC), last of the Achaemenid dynasts.
The tombs were looted following the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great.
Naqsh-e Rostam (también conocido como Naqš-i Rustam, en persa mod. نقش رستم Naqš-i Rustam [næqʃe ɾostæm]) es un sitio arqueológico situado a unos 3 km al noroeste de Persépolis, en la provincia de Fars en Irán. Este emplazamiento es llamado Næqš-e Rostæm "el retrato de Rostam", porque los persas pensaban que los bajorrelieves sasánidas bajo las tumbas representaban a Rostam, un héroe mitológico persa.
Es una pared rocosa que contiene cuatro tumbas reales aqueménidas rupestres, cruciformes y con bajorrelieves. Una de éstas, según las inscripciones que presenta, sería la tumba de Darío I. Las otras tres tumbas que se encuentran a los lados de la de Darío I, serían las de Jerjes I, Artajerjes I y Darío II pero no llevan ninguna inscripción que permita identificarlas con certeza. En la montaña de detrás de Persépolis hay otras dos tumbas semejantes, pertenecientes probablemente a Artajerjes II y Artajerjes III, lo mismo que una tumba inacabada que podría ser la de Arsés, o más seguramente de Darío III, el último rey de la dinastía aqueménida, que fue derrocado por Alejandro Magno.
La tumba de Darío es uno de los dos modelos de tumbas que existieron en el arte persa del periodo aqueménida. Se trata de una tumba excavada en roca como los hipogeos egipcios. El otro modelo es el de la tumba de Ciro en Pasargadas.
Hay también siete grandes bajorrelieves en la roca de Naqsh-e Rustam, bajo las tumbas, esculturas mandadas por los reyes sasánidas.
Frente a la roca se encuentra Ka'ba-i-Zartosht, un monumento zoroástrico. En la extremidad del sitio se encuentran dos pequeños altares de fuego.
Haveli is generic term used for a traditional townhouse and mansions in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh usually one with historical and architectural significance. The word haveli is derived from Arabic haveli, meaning "an enclosed place" or "private space" popularised under Mughal Empire and was devoid of any architectural affiliations. Later, the word haveli came to be used as generic term for various styles of regional mansions, townhouse and temples found in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangaldesh.
HISTORY
The traditional courtyard homes in South Asia is built on the ancient principles of Vastu Shastra. which state that all spaces emerge from a single point, that is the centre of the house. Courtyards are common feature in south asian architecture. The earliest archaeological evidence of courtyard homes in the region dates back to 2600–2450 BCE. Traditional homes in South Asia are built around courtyard and all family activities revolved around chowk or courtyard. Additionally, the courtyard serves as a light well and an effective ventilation strategy for hot and dry climates of South Asia. During medieval period, the term Haveli was first applied in Rajputana by the Vaishnava sect to refer to their temples in Gujarat under the Mughal Empire and Rajputana kingdoms. Later, the generic term haveli eventually came to be identified with townhouse and mansions of the merchant class.
CHARACTERISTIC
Socio-Cultural Aspects: The chowk or courtyard served as the centre for various ceremonies and the rituals. The sacred tulsi plant was placed here and worshipped daily to bring prosperity to the house.
Security and Privacy: The chowk, at times, separated areas for men and women, and provided them with privacy.
Climate: Treating open space in building design to respond to the local climate. Air movement caused by temperature differences is utilized in the natural ventilation of building.
Different Activities At Different Times: The use of the court in the day time, mostly by women to carry out their work, interact with other women in private open space. Mansions of merchant class had more than one courtyard.
Articulation Of Space: In Mor chowk, City Palace, Udaipur, there is the concept of courtyard as a dancing hall. Similarly, in havelis, a courtyard has several functions, commonly used for weddings and festive occasions.
Materials : Fired bricks, sandstone, marble, wood, plaster and granite are commonly used materials. Decorative aspects are influenced by local culture and traditions.
All these elements join to form an enclosure and give the chowk a composed secured feel. The architectural built form of havelis has evolved in response to the climate, lifestyle and availability of material. In hot climates where cooling is a necessity, buildings with internal courtyards were considered the most appropriate. It acted as a perfect shading technique, while also allowing light inside. The arcade along the court, or the high wall around it, kept the interiors cool.
Many of the havelis of India and Pakistan were influenced by Rajasthani architecture. They usually contain a courtyard often with a fountain in the centre. The old cities of Agra, Lucknow and Delhi in India and Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, Hyderabad in Pakistan have many fine examples of Rajasthani-style havelis.
FAMOUS HAVELIS IN INDIA
The term Haveli was first applied in Rajputana by the Vaishnava sect to refer to their temples in Gujarat. In the northern part of India. havelis for Lord Krishna are prevalent with huge mansion like constructions. The havelis are noted for their frescoes depicting images of gods, goddesses, animals, scenes from the British colonization, and the life stories of Lords Rama and Krishna. The music here was known as Haveli Sangeet.
Later on these temple architectures and frescoes were imitated while building huge individual mansions and now the word is popularly recognized with the mansions themselves. Between 1830 and 1930, Marwari's erected buildings in their homeland, Shekhawati and Marwar. These buildings were called havelis. The Marwaris commissioned artists to paint those buildings which were heavily influenced by the Mughal architecture.
The havelis were status symbols for the Marwaris as well as homes for their extended families, providing security and comfort in seclusion from the outside world. The havelis were to be closed from all sides with one large main gate.
The typical havelis in Shekhawati consisted of two courtyards - an outer one for the men which serves as an extended threshold, and the inner one, the domain of the women. The largest havelis could have up to three or four courtyards and were two to three stories high. Most of the havelis are empty nowadays or are maintained by a watchman (typically an old man). While many others have been converted into hotels and places of tourist attraction.
FAMOUS HAVELI IN MAWAR AREA (SIKAR DISTRICT)
"Nadine Le Prince Haveli"
FAMOUS HAVELI IN MAWAR AREA (JODHPUR DIVISION) Havelli Heritage, Ahore
The towns and villages of Shekhawati are famous for the embellished frescoes on the walls of their grandiose havelis, to the point of becoming popular tourist attractions.
The havelis in and around Jaisalmer Fort(also known as the Golden Fort), situated in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, of which the three most impressive are Patwon Ki Haveli, Salim Singh Ki Haveli, and Nathmal-Ki Haveli, deserve special mention. These were the elaborate homes of Jaisalmer's rich merchants. The ostentatious carvings etched out in sandstone with infinite detail and then painstakingly pieced together in different patterns each more lavish than the next were commissioned to put on show the owner's status and wealth. Around Jaisalmer, they are typically carved from yellow sandstone. They are often characterized by wall paintings, frescoes, jharokhas (balconies) and archways.
The Patwon Ji ki Haveli is the most important and the largest haveli, as it was the first erected in Jaisalmer. It is not a single haveli but a cluster of 5 small havelis. The first in the row is also the most popular, and is also known as Kothari's Patwa Haveli. The first among these was commissioned and constructed in the year 1805 by Guman Chand Patwa, then a rich trader of jewellery and fine brocades, and is the biggest and the most ostentatious. Patwa was a rich man and a renowned trader of his time and he could afford and thus order the construction of separate stories for each of his 5 sons. These were completed in the span of 50 years. All five houses were constructed in the first 60 years of the 19th century. Patwon Ji Ki is renowned for its ornate wall paintings, intricate yellow sandstone-carved jharokhas (balconies), gateways and archways. Although the building itself is made from yellow sandstone, the main gateway is brown.
FAMOUS HAVELIS OF PAKISTAN
There are a number of historically and architecturally significant havelis in Pakistan, most of which are situated in the Punjab province and constructed during the Mughal period.
Below is a list of some of the historically and architecturally significant havelis in Pakistan:
Kapoor Haveli in Peshawar
Fakir Khana Haveli and Museum, in Lahore
Mubarak Haveli in Lahore
Haveli Asif Jah in Lahore
Haveli Wajid Ali Shah in Lahore
Choona Mandi Haveli in Lahore
Haveli Nau Nihal Singh in Lahore
Haveli Barood Khana in Lahore
Lal Haveli or Chandu Di Haveli in Lahore
Haveli Man Singh in Jhelum
Lal Haveli in Rawalpindi
Saad Manzil in Kamalia
Khan Club in Peshawar
Waziristan Haveli in Abbottabad, home of Osama bin laden
Janjua Haveli in Malowal, Gujrat, Pakistan
Haveli Mubashar Ali Janjua, in Matore, Kahuta, Rawalpindi
HAVELIS IN POPULAR CULTURE
Haveli is an also a novel by Suzanne Fisher Staples and is a sequel to her Newbery Award-winning novel Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind. The story takes place in an old-fashioned haveli in Lahore, Pakistan.
WIKIPEDIA
english
The Monastery of Santa Maria of Junia located around Pitões of Junias, in the parish of the same name, municipality Montalegre, District of Vila Real, Portugal.
Background
This monastery dates back to an ancient pre-Romanesque hermitage, founded in the ninth century, which it followed the criteria of isolation. It lies in a narrow valley, inaccessible and far from roads and dwellings, enrolled in a grandiose landscape background.
In contrast to other monasteries of northern Portugal, which in general are possessors of productive hunting grounds, this first community of monks Junia depended on pastoralism, stressed the fact that his character humble and ascetic.
The current monastery
The current monastery temple and its annex were built during the first half of the twelfth century, even before the founding of the nation. It was then occupied monks of the Order of St. Benedict.
In the middle of the thirteenth century, the monastery began to follow the rule of the Cistercian Order, been added to the Abbey Oseira in Galicia.
Over the centuries this monastery was enriched with obtaining land in the region of Barroso and Galicia.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, known maintenance and improvement works which highlights the construction of the cloister and the expansion of the chancel.
In the early modern works were carried out lifting some dependencies of the convent and chapel of the temple, though destroyed by siltation caused by the stream that runs along the head of it.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the church was restored, both the timber and the lajeamento and redecorated with gilded altarpieces. From the middle of this century, however, began to go into decline and eventually lost income and monks.
With the extinction of the male religious orders (1834) spent his last monk to perform the duties of pastor of Pitões. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a devastating fire led to the ruin of many monastic dependencies.
The Monastery of Santa Maria delle Junia is classified as a National Monument by Decree No. 37728 of January 5, 1950.
In 1986 the Directorate General for National Buildings and Monuments has carried out extensive rehabilitation and improvement.
More recently, in 1994 and 1995, the Peneda-Geres promoted an archaeological intervention in the cloister and the convent kitchen.
The church of this convent happens a pilgrimage annually on 15 August, the people who come to Pitões of Junia and neighboring villages.
Character
This monastery has been organized according to a trapezoidal, being the church located on the north side to the south dependencies convent.
The divisions of the convent, largely collapsed, comprises two bodies: the first, parallel to the creek, it was the monks' dormitory. The second, which is perpendicular to the first, was where the kitchen was located, which still maintains its pyramidal chimney.
The old Romanesque cloister only retain three arches of the gallery leaning against the church. Back perfect, based in capitals decorated phytomorphic.
The temple has a single nave and chancel which is the best preserved structure of the monastery. In front, topped by a gable Romanesque truncated by an eighteenth-century belfry two eyes, opens with a beautiful doorway round arch, with a first and a second archivolt smooth exterior, adorned with lancets, in turn surrounded by a frieze with geometric decoration.
The arc abacuses were decorated by cordiform reasons, while the eardrum shows, the lower level, a lintel stylized flower decorated with cruciform and, above this, a Maltese cross poured framed by circular perforations arranged in a triangle.
The side walls of the nave ripping two portals simple, hollow by tympani crosses Malta, similar, being surmounted by frieze and cornice framed and covered the half wall for a frieze decorated with geometric motifs, under which projecting corbels, also adorned by these geometrical elements. The axial window of ousia shows the overlap of the Romanesque Gothic style home.
On a side window of ousia, facing north, a curious recumbent statue of a monk is interpreted by the population as the landmark of the maximum quota transfers the river over the centuries.
Inside a preserved ornate frieze that runs the height of the nave windows. The triumphal arch, two archivolts supported at Abaci smooth rounded off, is framed by two engravings. In the chancel, has become a main altarpiece with an elaborately carved composition.
Português
O Mosteiro de Santa Maria das Júnias localiza-se nos arredores de Pitões das Júnias, na freguesia de mesmo nome, concelho de Montalegre, Distrito de Vila Real, em Portugal.
Antecedentes
Este convento remonta a um antigo eremitério pré-românico, fundado no século IX, cuja implantação obedeceu a critérios de isolamento. Encontra-se num vale estreito, de difícil acesso e longe dos caminhos e de lugares habitados, inscrito em um grandioso fundo paisagístico.
Em contraste com outros cenóbios do Norte de Portugal, que no geral são possuidores de produtivos coutos, esta primeira comunidade de monges das Júnias dependia da pastorícia, fato que acentuou o seu carácter humilde e ascético.
O atual mosteiro
O atual mosteiro e seu templo anexo foram erguidos durante a primeira metade do século XII, antes mesmo da fundação da nacionalidade. Era então ocupado monges da Ordem de São Bento.
Em meados do século XIII, o mosteiro passou a seguir a regra da Ordem de Cister, ficado agregado à Abadia de Oseira, na Galiza.
Ao longo dos séculos, este mosteiro foi enriquecendo com a obtenção de terras na região do Barroso e na Galiza.
No inicio do século XIV, conheceu obras de manutenção e melhoramento em que se destaca a construção do claustro e a ampliação da capela-mor.
No início da Idade Moderna foram realizadas obras de elevação de algumas dependências do convento e da capela-mor do templo, entretanto destruídas pelo assoreamento provocado pelo ribeiro que corre junto à cabeceira do mesmo.
Na primeira metade do século XVIII, a igreja foi restaurada, a nível do madeiramento e do lajeamento, e redecorada com retábulos em talha dourada. A partir de meados desse século, entretanto, começou a entrar em decadência e acabou por perder monges e rendimentos.
Com a extinção das ordens religiosas masculinas (1834) o seu último monge passou a exercer a função de pároco de Pitões. Na segunda metade do século XIX, um devastador incêndio levou à ruína muitas das dependências conventuais.
O Mosteiro de Santa Maria das Júnias encontra-se classificado como Monumento Nacional pelo Decreto nº 37.728 de 5 de Janeiro de 1950.
Em 1986 a Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais levou a efeito obras de recuperação e melhoramento.
Mais recentemente, em 1994 e 1995, o Parque Nacional da Peneda-Gerês promoveu uma intervenção arqueológica no claustro e na cozinha conventuais.
À igreja deste convento acontece uma romaria anual, a 15 de Agosto, a que acorrem gentes de Pitões das Júnias e de povoações vizinhas.
Características
Este mosteiro apresenta-se organizado segundo uma planta trapezoidal, encontrando-se a igreja implantada no lado norte a as dependências conventuais no sul.
As divisões do convento, em grande desmoronadas, compreendem dois corpos: o primeiro, paralelo ao riacho, era o dormitório dos monges. O segundo, que se encontra perpendicular ao primeiro, era onde se localizava a cozinha, que ainda mantém a sua chaminé piramidal.
Do antigo claustro românico só se conservam três arcos da galeria encostada à igreja. De volta perfeita, assentam em capitéis com decoração fitomórfica.
O templo tem nave única e uma capela-mor que é a estrutura mais bem conservada do cenóbio. Na frontaria, românica rematada por uma empena truncada por um campanário setecentista de dois olhais, abre-se um belo portal com arco de volta perfeita, com uma primeira arquivolta lisa e uma segunda, exterior, adornada com lancetas, por sua vez envolvida por um friso com decoração geométrica.
Os ábacos do arco foram decorados por motivos cordiformes, enquanto o tímpano apresenta, ao nível inferior, um dintel decorado com flores estilizadas cruciformes e, por cima deste, uma cruz de Malta vazada, enquadrada por perfurações circulares dispostas em triângulo.
Nas paredes laterais da nave rasgam-se dois portais simples, de tímpanos vazados por cruzes de Malta, semelhantes entre si, sendo rematadas por friso e cornija moldurada e percorridos, a meia parede, por um friso adornado com motivos geométricos, sob o qual se projectam mísulas, também estas enfeitadas por elementos geometrizantes. A janela axial da ousia mostra a sobreposição do estilo gótico ao românico inicial.
Numa janela lateral da ousia, voltada a norte, uma curiosa estátua jacente de um monge é interpretada pela população como sendo o marco da cota máxima transbordos do rio ao longo dos séculos.
No interior conserva-se um friso ornamentado que percorre a nave à altura das janelas. O arco triunfal, de duas arquivoltas lisas apoiadas em ábacos boleados, é enquadrado por dois retábulos de talha. Na capela-mor, dispõe-se um retábulo-mor com uma elaborada composição em talha.
DATES - Sat 28 July to Sun 12 Aug
Sat 28th July to Sat 6th 2018
Ballycastle - Joe Charlie's Cottage
Sat 6 Aug to Sun 12 Aug
Portaferry - Mary and Gabriel's House Cloughey Road, with Granny Wedge
Monday 6th August 2018
Portaferry,
beach Strangford Lough
The history of Malabar dates back to the 1890 when the culture of Dutch began to flow into the highland of Pangalengan. Malabar tea estate was established in 1896 and Karel Albert Rudolf Bosscha was the plantation’s first manager. Later on, he was the General Manager to all tea estate in the Pangalengan region. During his 32 years as manager of the tea estate he had accomplished his job enormously. He erected two tea factories in Malabar, one was near his residence also his office, called Malabar tea factory and the other was erected later (1905), called Tanara (now Malabar tea factory). The first Malabar tea factory is now known as the “Sporthall Gelora Dinamika”. From Malabar Tea Estate.
english
The Monastery of Santa Maria of Junia located around Pitões of Junias, in the parish of the same name, municipality Montalegre, District of Vila Real, Portugal.
Background
This monastery dates back to an ancient pre-Romanesque hermitage, founded in the ninth century, which it followed the criteria of isolation. It lies in a narrow valley, inaccessible and far from roads and dwellings, enrolled in a grandiose landscape background.
In contrast to other monasteries of northern Portugal, which in general are possessors of productive hunting grounds, this first community of monks Junia depended on pastoralism, stressed the fact that his character humble and ascetic.
The current monastery
The current monastery temple and its annex were built during the first half of the twelfth century, even before the founding of the nation. It was then occupied monks of the Order of St. Benedict.
In the middle of the thirteenth century, the monastery began to follow the rule of the Cistercian Order, been added to the Abbey Oseira in Galicia.
Over the centuries this monastery was enriched with obtaining land in the region of Barroso and Galicia.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, known maintenance and improvement works which highlights the construction of the cloister and the expansion of the chancel.
In the early modern works were carried out lifting some dependencies of the convent and chapel of the temple, though destroyed by siltation caused by the stream that runs along the head of it.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the church was restored, both the timber and the lajeamento and redecorated with gilded altarpieces. From the middle of this century, however, began to go into decline and eventually lost income and monks.
With the extinction of the male religious orders (1834) spent his last monk to perform the duties of pastor of Pitões. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a devastating fire led to the ruin of many monastic dependencies.
The Monastery of Santa Maria delle Junia is classified as a National Monument by Decree No. 37728 of January 5, 1950.
In 1986 the Directorate General for National Buildings and Monuments has carried out extensive rehabilitation and improvement.
More recently, in 1994 and 1995, the Peneda-Geres promoted an archaeological intervention in the cloister and the convent kitchen.
The church of this convent happens a pilgrimage annually on 15 August, the people who come to Pitões of Junia and neighboring villages.
Character
This monastery has been organized according to a trapezoidal, being the church located on the north side to the south dependencies convent.
The divisions of the convent, largely collapsed, comprises two bodies: the first, parallel to the creek, it was the monks' dormitory. The second, which is perpendicular to the first, was where the kitchen was located, which still maintains its pyramidal chimney.
The old Romanesque cloister only retain three arches of the gallery leaning against the church. Back perfect, based in capitals decorated phytomorphic.
The temple has a single nave and chancel which is the best preserved structure of the monastery. In front, topped by a gable Romanesque truncated by an eighteenth-century belfry two eyes, opens with a beautiful doorway round arch, with a first and a second archivolt smooth exterior, adorned with lancets, in turn surrounded by a frieze with geometric decoration.
The arc abacuses were decorated by cordiform reasons, while the eardrum shows, the lower level, a lintel stylized flower decorated with cruciform and, above this, a Maltese cross poured framed by circular perforations arranged in a triangle.
The side walls of the nave ripping two portals simple, hollow by tympani crosses Malta, similar, being surmounted by frieze and cornice framed and covered the half wall for a frieze decorated with geometric motifs, under which projecting corbels, also adorned by these geometrical elements. The axial window of ousia shows the overlap of the Romanesque Gothic style home.
On a side window of ousia, facing north, a curious recumbent statue of a monk is interpreted by the population as the landmark of the maximum quota transfers the river over the centuries.
Inside a preserved ornate frieze that runs the height of the nave windows. The triumphal arch, two archivolts supported at Abaci smooth rounded off, is framed by two engravings. In the chancel, has become a main altarpiece with an elaborately carved composition.
Português
O Mosteiro de Santa Maria das Júnias localiza-se nos arredores de Pitões das Júnias, na freguesia de mesmo nome, concelho de Montalegre, Distrito de Vila Real, em Portugal.
Antecedentes
Este convento remonta a um antigo eremitério pré-românico, fundado no século IX, cuja implantação obedeceu a critérios de isolamento. Encontra-se num vale estreito, de difícil acesso e longe dos caminhos e de lugares habitados, inscrito em um grandioso fundo paisagístico.
Em contraste com outros cenóbios do Norte de Portugal, que no geral são possuidores de produtivos coutos, esta primeira comunidade de monges das Júnias dependia da pastorícia, fato que acentuou o seu carácter humilde e ascético.
O atual mosteiro
O atual mosteiro e seu templo anexo foram erguidos durante a primeira metade do século XII, antes mesmo da fundação da nacionalidade. Era então ocupado monges da Ordem de São Bento.
Em meados do século XIII, o mosteiro passou a seguir a regra da Ordem de Cister, ficado agregado à Abadia de Oseira, na Galiza.
Ao longo dos séculos, este mosteiro foi enriquecendo com a obtenção de terras na região do Barroso e na Galiza.
No inicio do século XIV, conheceu obras de manutenção e melhoramento em que se destaca a construção do claustro e a ampliação da capela-mor.
No início da Idade Moderna foram realizadas obras de elevação de algumas dependências do convento e da capela-mor do templo, entretanto destruídas pelo assoreamento provocado pelo ribeiro que corre junto à cabeceira do mesmo.
Na primeira metade do século XVIII, a igreja foi restaurada, a nível do madeiramento e do lajeamento, e redecorada com retábulos em talha dourada. A partir de meados desse século, entretanto, começou a entrar em decadência e acabou por perder monges e rendimentos.
Com a extinção das ordens religiosas masculinas (1834) o seu último monge passou a exercer a função de pároco de Pitões. Na segunda metade do século XIX, um devastador incêndio levou à ruína muitas das dependências conventuais.
O Mosteiro de Santa Maria das Júnias encontra-se classificado como Monumento Nacional pelo Decreto nº 37.728 de 5 de Janeiro de 1950.
Em 1986 a Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais levou a efeito obras de recuperação e melhoramento.
Mais recentemente, em 1994 e 1995, o Parque Nacional da Peneda-Gerês promoveu uma intervenção arqueológica no claustro e na cozinha conventuais.
À igreja deste convento acontece uma romaria anual, a 15 de Agosto, a que acorrem gentes de Pitões das Júnias e de povoações vizinhas.
Características
Este mosteiro apresenta-se organizado segundo uma planta trapezoidal, encontrando-se a igreja implantada no lado norte a as dependências conventuais no sul.
As divisões do convento, em grande desmoronadas, compreendem dois corpos: o primeiro, paralelo ao riacho, era o dormitório dos monges. O segundo, que se encontra perpendicular ao primeiro, era onde se localizava a cozinha, que ainda mantém a sua chaminé piramidal.
Do antigo claustro românico só se conservam três arcos da galeria encostada à igreja. De volta perfeita, assentam em capitéis com decoração fitomórfica.
O templo tem nave única e uma capela-mor que é a estrutura mais bem conservada do cenóbio. Na frontaria, românica rematada por uma empena truncada por um campanário setecentista de dois olhais, abre-se um belo portal com arco de volta perfeita, com uma primeira arquivolta lisa e uma segunda, exterior, adornada com lancetas, por sua vez envolvida por um friso com decoração geométrica.
Os ábacos do arco foram decorados por motivos cordiformes, enquanto o tímpano apresenta, ao nível inferior, um dintel decorado com flores estilizadas cruciformes e, por cima deste, uma cruz de Malta vazada, enquadrada por perfurações circulares dispostas em triângulo.
Nas paredes laterais da nave rasgam-se dois portais simples, de tímpanos vazados por cruzes de Malta, semelhantes entre si, sendo rematadas por friso e cornija moldurada e percorridos, a meia parede, por um friso adornado com motivos geométricos, sob o qual se projectam mísulas, também estas enfeitadas por elementos geometrizantes. A janela axial da ousia mostra a sobreposição do estilo gótico ao românico inicial.
Numa janela lateral da ousia, voltada a norte, uma curiosa estátua jacente de um monge é interpretada pela população como sendo o marco da cota máxima transbordos do rio ao longo dos séculos.
No interior conserva-se um friso ornamentado que percorre a nave à altura das janelas. O arco triunfal, de duas arquivoltas lisas apoiadas em ábacos boleados, é enquadrado por dois retábulos de talha. Na capela-mor, dispõe-se um retábulo-mor com uma elaborada composição em talha.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by Fauchois. The card, which has a divided back, was printed by Baudinière of Paris.
The people in the photograph (and the horse!) have obviously been posed for the shot.
Fouquereuil
Fouquereuil is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais département in the Hauts-de-France region of France.
It is a farming village situated 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Béthune and 30 miles (48.3 km) southwest of Lille. Fouquereuil's population in 2017 was 1,570.
The church of St. Nicolas dates from the nineteenth century, and there is also an old mill. St. Nicholas was rebuilt, along with the rest of the village, after the Great War.
A Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery is located nearby. Sandpits British Cemetery was begun by the XIII Corps at the outset of the German advance in April 1918, and continued to be used by them until September 1918.
There are now 394 Great War burials in the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Shot at Dawn
One of the 394 men laid to rest in the cemetery was 15161 Private Patrick Murphy of the 47th. Battalion Machine Gun Corps. He was executed for desertion the 12th. September 1918.
He had served for most of the war, but it seems that he was convicted of desertion on 3 separate occasions. The Roman Catholic Padre reported that:
"Murphy went to his execution
wonderfully calm & resigned."
British Military Execution Protocol
chrishobbs.com tells us that nearly all executions conducted by the British Army in the Great War more or less followed the pattern described below in this first-hand account:
'The officer had loaded the rifles, and had
left them laying on the ground at our position.
We were warned to fire straight, or we may
have to suffer the same fate.
The prisoner was taken out of a car (we saw
him get out, with a black cap over his head
and guarded) and placed on the other side
of a curtain.
If we did not kill him, the officer would have
to.
As soon as the curtain dropped (the prisoner
was tied to a chair five paces away from us,
a black mark over his heart) we got the order
to fire.
One blank and nine live rounds. It went off
as one. I did not have a blank. The prisoner
did not feel it. His body moved when we fired,
then the curtain went up. The firing squad
only saw him for a few minutes.
We went back to the Battalion Orderly Room
and got a big tumbler of rum each, and we
went back to our billets, ate, and went to bed.
We had the rest of the day off. It was a job I
never wanted'.
(From 'It Made You Think of Home', the journal of Deward Barnes, CEF, on the execution of Private Harold Lodge on the 13th. March 1918).
Chris Hobbs goes on to say that even though the rate of desertion was over 4 times higher in the UK, no soldier was ever executed for desertion at home.
This was because executions abroad could be largely covered up by the Military, whereas any conducted in the UK would have provoked riots. This was especially the case after the futile loss of life that occurred during the Somme Offensive of 1916.
A Typical Execution
The condemned private spends his last night in a small room, alone with his thoughts before his execution at dawn. He might be writing painful letters to family and friends. He is also likely to be encouraged to drink heavily in order to be insensible during execution. The private is guarded by two military policemen (MPs or redcaps) and ministered by a chaplain.
The condemned man’s commanding officer (CO) orders a company of men to witness the execution, wanting to set an example to other would-be deserters. Meanwhile a firing squad assembles, sick with nerves, in the dawn light. Some of the men know the condemned and have mixed feelings about his fate, some even carrying deep resentment at having to execute him. Their rifles have been pre-loaded—one with a blank—to take some of the individual responsibility away from shooting their fighting pal.
The condemned man is led, blind drunk, to a post by two redcaps, his hands tied behind his back. The lieutenant waits at the side of the shooting party, with a medical officer (MO). The lieutenant (Lt.) gives the order to shoot the prisoner. Some deliberately shoot wide. Two of the men vomit on the spot. The MO checks the prisoner over and concludes that the private is mortally wounded, but not dead. The young lieutenant, with shaky hands, administers the coup de grâce: a bullet to the head.
A military ambulance stands by to take the corpse off to be buried. That same evening the battalion colonel writes a letter to the private’s parents informing them that their son has been shot at the front. He leaves the message deliberately ambiguous, sparing the man’s family any difficult feelings about his execution.
Posthumous Pardons
The 'Shot at Dawn' Memorial in Alrewas, Staffordshire, originally contained the names of 306 men who were executed for 'cowardice' or 'desertion'.
With many now recognised as having been suffering from mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder, these men were posthumously pardoned by Royal Assent in November 2006.
The Staffordshire memorial was created to honour their sacrifices, along with all those who died in combat fighting for the British Empire during the Great War.
200,000 serving soldiers were officially court-martialled by the British High Command during the Great War.
Of these, 20,000 were found guilty of offences that carried the death penalty. 3,000 officially received it, although most of these sentences were subsequently commuted.
In the end, of the 3,000, 346 executions were carried out by firing squad.
Now, of the 40 names left off the Shot at Dawn Memorial, three have been added, thanks to the persistence of memorial creator Andy DeComyn.
They are New Zealander Jack Braithwaite, Gunner William Lewis from Scotland, and Jesse Robert Short, from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
Jack Braithwaite
Braithwaite's 'mutiny', according to the Birmingham Mail, consisted of nothing more than a misdemeanour.
The bohemian former journalist, who'd confessed at his trial to not being a natural soldier, had tried to calm down a belligerent prisoner at Blargies prison in Rouen by taking the man to his tent to feed him.
The soldier, Private Little, had been a ringleader in a small uprising against the prison guards. But Little was an Australian, and couldn't be executed because Australia's government wouldn't allow Great Britain to execute its soldiers.
Unfortunately Braithwaite was a New Zealander, and could be executed. His attempt to defuse the potential riot (sparked by appalling conditions at the prison) involved him leading Little away from the custody of a staff sergeant, which officially amounted to mutiny.
Jack was subsequently shot by firing squad on the 28th. August 1916.
Gunner William Lewis
Jack's execution occurred within five minutes of Gunner William Lewis, who'd also been involved in the uprising at the prison.
Corporal Jesse Short
Meanwhile, Corporal Jesse Short was condemned to death for uttering:
"Put a rope around that bugger's neck,
tie a stone to it and throw him into the
river".
He was said to be inciting guards barring his exit from the infamous 'Bull Ring' training camp to rebel against their officer.
This was the September 1917 Étaples Mutiny, an uprising by around 80 servicemen rebelling against what are now acknowledged to have been harsh and unreasonable conditions at the camp.
The uprising was depicted in the 1978 book (and 1986 BBC series) 'The Monocled Mutineer', the lead character in which is said to have been based at least partially on Corporal Short.
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, confirmed Short's death sentence (as he had Lewis's a year earlier).
Short, Lewis, and Braithwaite received their pardons and have been honoured along with comrades who fell in battle.
The remaining 37 men who were shot, according to Richard Pursehouse of the Staffordshire military history research group the Chase Project, were not executed for mutiny, but murder.
As this also would have resulted in a death sentence even under civil law codes of the time, it was decided that their names should not be added to the memorial.
On the control consoles are these numbered wheels. They are actually used to set the date. The 4 number one is for the year.
My dad's time overseas with the 102nd Infantry. He was an MP. Very neat printer- my handwriting is horrible!
Abydos dates back to the dawn of Ancient Egyptian civilisation when it was established as the cult centre of the god of the Netherworld Osiris and the burial site for a number of the earliest kings. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abydos,_Egypt
Over the centuries several temples were constructed at the site on the edge of the desert, the Great Osiris Temple being at the heart of the god's cult but little remains of this structure. What visitors come to Abydos to see today are the far more substantial remains of the New Kingdom temples built by Seti I and his son Ramesses II.
The Temple of Seti I is the glory of Abydos, an impressive complex that originally comprised two large forecourts with towering pylons followed by a succession of pillared halls and chapels beyond. Today the forecourts and pylons are so ruined that only their lower parts remain, but beyond this the heart of the temple remains almost intact, and its many chambers, walls and pillars bear some of the very finest relief decoration in all of Egypt.
The interior is somewhat gloomy and takes a while to adjust to after the glare of the sun outside. The roof is largely a modern restoration in order to protect the ancient colouring that remains on much of the carving and admits little natural light. initially the decoration the visitor encounters in the first hypostyle hall is of a standard type, sunken relief from the reign of Ramesses II who fiinished his father's temple after the latter's death. It is only when one progresses into the second hypostyle halls and the group of chapels and chambers beyond that the fame of the art of Abydos becomes clear.
The relief sculpture of Seti I's reign are without parallel in the New Kingdom, the pinnacle of artistic achievement in the surviving temples of Egypt. The figures are all in raised (rather than the easier sunken) relief and the carving is of such delicacy that one can only assume that Seti must have placed great emphasis on the quality of the decoration he commissioned during his fifteen year reign (evidence of this can be seen in other projects commissioned by the king, but none more so than his temple at Abydos). The survival of much of the ancient colouring in many areas simply adds to the magic, with some scenes in pristine condition. Luckily the sort of vandalism that afflicted many temples during the post-Pharaonic period was only confined to one or two rooms and most decoration remains intact.
At the rear of the second hypostyle halls is a sequence of seven chapels dedicated to six major deities along with the pharaoh himself. Beyond these lie further sumptuously decorated rooms connected to various rituals of Osiris.
To the rear of the temple is a wing with further chambers accessed via a corridor inscribed with the famous Abydos 'King's List', which bears the cartouches of all the Pharaohs up to Seti's reign (with a few notable omissions). The corridor also leads out to a separate structure behind the temple known as the Osireon, a sunken monolithic chamber erected as a cenotaph to the god Osiris.
Some distance to the north of the Temple of Seti I lies the much smaller temple of his son Ramesses II (who decided to add his own temple in addition to finishing his father's). This is much less well preserved, with the walls only standing up to around three metres high, but much of the relief decoration of these lower courses remains, and much of the vivid colouring is beautifully preserved.
Abydos is one of Egypt's most important sites, both historically and artistically and will richly reward the visitor.
Wat Saket Ratchawora Mahawihan (Thai: วัดสระเกศราชวรมหาวิหาร), usually shortened to Wat Saket, is a Buddhist temple (wat) in Pom Prap Sattru Phai district, Bangkok, Thailand.
The temple dates back to the Ayutthaya era, when it was known as Wat Sakae (วัดสะแก). When Bangkok became the capital, King Rama I (1737–1809) renovated the temple and gave it its present name (which roughly translates as "wash hair"); it was believed that on his return from the war, the king stopped to take a bath and wash his hair here, before entering the inner city.
Phu Khao Thong (“Golden Mountain”, ภูเขาทอง) is a steep artificial hill inside the Wat Saket compound.
Rama I's grandson, King Rama III (1788–1851), decided to build a chedi of huge dimensions inside Wat Saket, but the chedi collapsed during construction because the soft soil of Bangkok could not support the weight. Over the next few decades, the abandoned mud-and-brick structure acquired the shape of a natural hill and was overgrown with weeds. The locals called it the phu khao (ภูเขา, 'mountain'), as if it was a natural feature. During that time, it also functioned as a lookout tower for soldiers concerned about the arrival of enemy armies.
During the reign of King Rama IV, construction began of a small chedi on the hill. It was completed early in the reign of his son, King Rama V (1853–1910) and sanctified by being covered in a layer of gold. A relic of the Buddha was brought from Sri Lanka by Prince Pritsadang and placed in the chedi. The surrounding concrete walls were added in the 1940s to stop the hill from eroding. The modern Wat Saket was built in the early 20th century using Carrara marble.
An annual festival is held at Wat Saket every November, featuring a candlelight procession up Phu Khao Thong to the chedi, which is wrapped in a long red robe (similar to "Hae Pha Khuen That" (แห่ผ้าขึ้นธาตุ) festival of Wat Phra Mahathat, Nakhon Si Thammarat province in southern Thailand. Devotees write their names and the names of family members on the robe and pray, believing that their prayers will be fulfilled. This festival has been observed since the reign of King Rama V.
At the same time, a great Loi Krathong festival takes place at the temple, along with freak shows such as Phi Krasue ("floating female ghost head with glowing viscera dangling below", ผีกระสือ), Dek Song Hua ("two-headed child", เด็กสองหัว), Mia Ngu ("snake's wife", เมียงู), or fun games Sao Noi Tok Nam ("little girl falling into water", สาวน้อยตกน้ำ) etc. This festival is well known to Bangkok residents. The nearby Fort Mahakan community was a hub of the fireworks industry; however, after the demolition of the fort and removal of its community, fireworks trading has been banned.
Phu Khao Thong is now a popular Bangkok tourist attraction and has become a symbol of the city.
In the early Rattanakosin period (between reigns of Rama I and Rama V), the Siamese had a tradition of not cremating the dead within the city walls, because it was believed to be an evil portent. Wat Saket was outside the city walls, so it was often used as a place to cremate dead bodies, which were carried through the Pratu Phi or 'ghost gate'.
In 1820, during the reign of King Rama II (1809–1824), cholera spread from Penang to Bangkok, leading to more than 30,000 deaths in the capital. Wat Saket became the main receiving ground of many dead bodies that were moved in everyday, along with Wat Sangwet in Banglampoo and Wat Choeng Lane in Sampheng. Due to the large number of deaths, the temple was unable to cremate every dead body; some of the bodies were therefore left in the open area of the monastery, and vultures began coming to devour them. The temple became the main food court for vultures, and there were outbreaks of cholera every dry season until the early reign of King Rama V. The severest outbreak was in 1840 during the reign of King Rama III when one in ten people in Siam and the surrounding areas were killed by the disease. The last spreading of the disease took place in 1881, when many hundreds died each day.
The vultures became a grim image and reminder of the deaths, and Raeng Wat Saket (แร้งวัดสระเกศ, 'vultures of Wat Saket') has become a common saying, often paired with Pret Wat Suthat (เปรตวัดสุทัศน์, 'preta of Wat Suthat', probably a reference to legends surrounding the wall murals of that temple).
Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi) in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population of 10.539 million as of 2020, 15.3 percent of the country's population. Over 14 million people (22.2 percent) lived within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region at the 2010 census, making Bangkok an extreme primate city, dwarfing Thailand's other urban centres in both size and importance to the national economy.
Bangkok traces its roots to a small trading post during the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 15th century, which eventually grew and became the site of two capital cities, Thonburi in 1768 and Rattanakosin in 1782. Bangkok was at the heart of the modernization of Siam, later renamed Thailand, during the late-19th century, as the country faced pressures from the West. The city was at the centre of Thailand's political struggles throughout the 20th century, as the country abolished absolute monarchy, adopted constitutional rule, and underwent numerous coups and several uprisings. The city, incorporated as a special administrative area under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in 1972, grew rapidly during the 1960s through the 1980s and now exerts a significant impact on Thailand's politics, economy, education, media and modern society.
The Asian investment boom in the 1980s and 1990s led many multinational corporations to locate their regional headquarters in Bangkok. The city is now a regional force in finance and business. It is an international hub for transport and health care, and has emerged as a centre for the arts, fashion, and entertainment. The city is known for its street life and cultural landmarks, as well as its red-light districts. The Grand Palace and Buddhist temples including Wat Arun and Wat Pho stand in contrast with other tourist attractions such as the nightlife scenes of Khaosan Road and Patpong. Bangkok is among the world's top tourist destinations, and has been named the world's most visited city consistently in several international rankings.
Bangkok's rapid growth coupled with little urban planning has resulted in a haphazard cityscape and inadequate infrastructure. Despite an extensive expressway network, an inadequate road network and substantial private car usage have led to chronic and crippling traffic congestion, which caused severe air pollution in the 1990s. The city has since turned to public transport in an attempt to solve the problem, operating eight urban rail lines and building other public transit, but congestion still remains a prevalent issue. The city faces long-term environmental threats such as sea level rise due to climate change.
The history of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, dates at least to the early 15th century, when it was under the rule of Ayutthaya. Due to its strategic location near the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, the town gradually increased in importance, and after the fall of Ayutthaya King Taksin established his new capital of Thonburi there, on the river's west bank. King Phutthayotfa Chulalok, who succeeded Taksin, moved the capital to the eastern bank in 1782, to which the city dates its foundation under its current Thai name, "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon". Bangkok has since undergone tremendous changes, growing rapidly, especially in the second half of the 20th century, to become the primate city of Thailand. It was the centre of Siam's modernization in the late 19th century, subjected to Allied bombing during the Second World War, and has long been the modern nation's central political stage, with numerous uprisings and coups d'état having taken place on its streets throughout the years.
It is not known exactly when the area which is now Bangkok was first settled. It probably originated as a small farming and trading community, situated in a meander of the Chao Phraya River within the mandala of Ayutthaya's influence. The town had become an important customs outpost by as early as the 15th century; the title of its customs official is given as Nai Phra Khanon Thonburi (Thai: นายพระขนอนทณบุรี) in a document from the reign of Ayutthayan king Chao Sam Phraya (1424–1448). The name also appears in the 1805 revised code of laws known as the Law of Three Seals.
At the time, the Chao Phraya flowed through what are now the Bangkok Noi and Bangkok Yai canals, forming a large loop in which lay the town. In the reign of King Chairacha (either in 1538 or 1542), a waterway was excavated, bypassing the loop and shortening the route for ships sailing up to Ayutthaya. The flow of the river has since changed to follow the new waterway, dividing the town and making the western part an island. This geographical feature may have given the town the name Bang Ko (บางเกาะ), meaning 'island village', which later became Bangkok (บางกอก, pronounced in Thai as [bāːŋ kɔ̀ːk]). Another theory regarding the origin of the name speculates that it is shortened from Bang Makok (บางมะกอก), makok being the name of Spondias pinnata, a plant bearing olive-like fruit. This is supported by the fact that Wat Arun, a historic temple in the area, used to be named Wat Makok. Specific mention of the town was first made in the royal chronicles from the reign of King Maha Chakkraphat (1548–1568), giving its name as Thonburi Si Mahasamut (ธนบุรีศรีมหาสมุทร). Bangkok was probably a colloquial name, albeit one widely adopted by foreign visitors.
The importance of Bangkok/Thonburi increased with the amount of Ayutthaya's maritime trade. Dutch records noted that ships passing through Bangkok were required to declare their goods and number of passengers, as well as pay customs duties. Ships' cannons would be confiscated and held there before they were allowed to proceed upriver to Ayutthaya. An early English language account is that of Adam Denton, who arrived aboard the Globe, an East India Company merchantman bearing a letter from King James I, which arrived in "the Road of Syam" (Pak Nam) on 15 August 1612, where the port officer of Bangkok attended to the ship. Denton's account mentions that he and his companions journeyed "up the river some twenty miles to a town called Bancope, where we were well received, and further 100 miles to the city...."
Ayutthaya's maritime trade was at its height during the reign of King Narai (1656–1688). Recognition of the city's strategic location guarding the water passage to Ayutthaya lead to expansion of the military presence there. A fort of Western design was constructed on the east side of the river around 1685–1687 under the supervision of French engineer de la Mare, probably replacing an earlier structure, while plans to rebuild the fort on the west bank were also made. De la Mare had arrived with the French embassy of Chevalier de Chaumont, and remained in Siam along with Chevalier de Forbin, who had been appointed governor of Bangkok. The Bangkok garrison under Forbin consisted of Siamese, Portuguese, and French reportedly totalling about one thousand men.
French control over the city was further consolidated when the French General Desfarges, who had arrived with the second French embassy in 1687, secured the king's permission to board troops there. This, however, lead to resentment among Siamese nobles, led by Phetracha, ultimately resulting in the Siamese revolution of 1688, in which King Narai was overthrown and 40,000 Siamese troops besieged Bangkok's eastern fort for four months before an agreement was reached and the French were allowed to withdraw. The revolution resulted in Siam's ties with the West being virtually severed, steering its trade towards China and Japan. The eastern fort was subsequently demolished on Phetracha's orders.
Ayutthaya was razed by the Burmese in 1767. In the following months, multiple factions competed for control of the kingdom's lands. Of these, Phraya Tak, governor of Tak and a general fighting in Ayutthaya's defence prior to its fall, emerged as the strongest. After succeeding in reclaiming the cities of Ayutthaya and Bangkok, Phraya Tak declared himself king (popularly known as King Taksin) in 1768 and established Thonburi as his capital. Reasons given for this change include the totality of Ayutthaya's destruction and Thonburi's strategic location. Being a fortified town with a sizeable population meant that not much would need to be reconstructed. The existence of an old Chinese trading settlement on the eastern bank allowed Taksin to use his Chinese connections to import rice and revive trade.
King Taksin had the city area extended northwards to border the Bangkok Noi Canal. A moat was dug to protect the city's western border, on which new city walls and fortifications were built. Moats and walls were also constructed on the eastern bank, encircling the city together with the canals on the western side. The king's palace (Thonburi Palace) was built within the old city walls, including the temples of Wat Chaeng (Wat Arun) and Wat Thai Talat (Wat Molilokkayaram) within the palace grounds. Outlying orchards were re-landscaped for rice farming.
Much of Taksin's reign was spent in military campaigns to consolidate the Thonburi Kingdom's hold over Siamese lands. His kingdom, however, would last only until 1782 when a coup was mounted against him, and the general Chao Phraya Chakri established himself as king, later to be known as Phutthayotfa Chulalok or Rama I.
Rama I re-established the capital on the more strategic east bank of the river, relocating the Chinese already settled there to the area between Wat Sam Pluem and Wat Sampheng (which developed into Bangkok's Chinatown). Fortifications were rebuilt, and another series of moats was created, encircling the city in an area known as Rattanakosin Island.
The erection of the city pillar on 21 April 1782 is regarded as the formal date of the city's establishment. (The year would later mark the start of the Rattanakosin Era after calendar reforms by King Rama V in 1888.) Rama I named the new city Krung Rattanakosin In Ayothaya (กรุงรัตนโกสินทร์อินท์อโยธยา). This was later modified by King Nangklao to be: Krungthepmahanakhon Bowonrattanakosin Mahintha-ayutthaya. While settlements on both banks were commonly called Bangkok, both the Burney Treaty of 1826 and the Roberts Treaty of 1833 refer to the capital as the City of Sia-Yut'hia. King Mongkut (Rama IV) would later give the city its full ceremonial name:
Rama I modelled his city after the former capital of Ayutthaya, with the Grand Palace, Front Palace and royal temples by the river, next to the royal field (now Sanam Luang). Continuing outwards were the royal court of justice, royal stables and military prison. Government offices were located within the Grand Palace, while residences of nobles were concentrated south of the palace walls. Settlements spread outwards from the city centre.
The new capital is referred to in Thai sources as Rattanakosin, a name shared by the Siamese kingdom of this historical period. The name Krung Thep and Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, both shortened forms of the full ceremonial name, began to be used near the end of the 19th century. Foreigners, however, continued to refer to the city by the name Bangkok, which has seen continued use until this day.
Most of Rama I's reign was also marked by continued military campaigns, though the Burmese threat gradually declined afterwards. His successors consistently saw to the renovation of old temples, palaces, and monuments in the city. New canals were also built, gradually expanding the fledgling city as areas available for agriculture increased and new transport networks were created.
At the time of the city's foundation, most of the population lived by the river or the canals, often in floating houses on the water. Waterways served as the main method of transportation, and farming communities depended on them for irrigation. Outside the city walls, settlements sprawled along both river banks. Forced settlers, mostly captives of war, also formed several ethnic communities outside the city walls.
Large numbers of Chinese immigrants continued to settle in Bangkok, especially during the early 19th century. Such was their prominence that Europeans visiting in the 1820s estimated that they formed over half of the city population. The Chinese excelled in trade, and led the development of a market economy. The Chinese settlement at Sampheng had become a bustling market by 1835.
By the mid-19th century, the West had become an increasingly powerful presence. Missionaries, envoys and merchants began re-visiting Bangkok and Siam, bringing with them both modern innovations and the threat of colonialism. King Mongkut (Rama IV, reigned 1851–1868) was open to Western ideas and knowledge, but was also forced to acknowledge their powers, with the signing of the Bowring Treaty in 1855. During his reign, industrialization began taking place in Bangkok, which saw the introduction of the steam engine, modern shipbuilding and the printing press. Influenced by the Western community, Charoen Krung Road, the city's first paved street, was constructed in 1862–1864. This was followed by Bamrung Mueang, Fueang Nakhon, Trong (now Rama IV) and Si Lom Roads. Land transport would later surpass the canals in importance, shifting people's homes from floating dwellings toward permanent buildings. The limits of the city proper were also expanded during his reign, extending to the Phadung Krung Kasem Canal, dug in 1851.
King Mongkut's son Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910) was set upon modernizing the country. He engaged in wide-ranging reforms, abolishing slavery, corvée (unfree labour) and the feudal system, and creating a centralized bureaucracy and a professional army. The Western concept of nationhood was adopted, and national borders demarcated against British and French territories. Disputes with the French resulted in the Paknam Incident in 1893, when the French sent gunboats up the Chao Phraya to blockade Bangkok, resulting in Siam's concession of territory to France.
With Chulalongkorn's reforms, governance of the capital and the surrounding areas, established as Monthon Krung Thep Phra Mahanakhon (มณฑลกรุงเทพพระมหานคร), came under the Ministry of Urban Affairs (Nakhonban). During his reign many more canals and roads were built, expanding the urban reaches of the capital. Infrastructure was developed, with the introduction of railway and telegraph services between Bangkok and Samut Prakan and then expanding countrywide. Electricity was introduced, first to palaces and government offices, then to serve electric trams in the capital and later the general public. The King's fascination with the West was reflected in the royal adoption of Western dress and fashions, but most noticeably in architecture. He commissioned the construction of the neoclassical Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall at the new Dusit Palace, which was linked to the historic city centre by the grand Ratchadamnoen Avenue, inspired by the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Examples of Western influence in architecture became visible throughout the city.
By 1900, rural market zones in Bangkok began developing into residential districts. Rama VI (1910–1925) continued his predecessor's program of the development of public works by establishing Chulalongkorn University in 1916, and commissioned a system of locks to control waterway levels surrounding the developing city, he also provided the city's first and largest recreational area, Lumphini Park. The Memorial Bridge was constructed in 1932 to connect Thonburi to Bangkok, which was believed to promote economic growth and modernization in a period when infrastructure was developing considerably. Bangkok became the centre stage for power struggles between the military and political elite as the country abolished absolute monarchy in 1932. It was subject to Japanese occupation and Allied bombing during World War II. With the war over in 1945, British and Indian troops landed in September, and during their brief occupation of the city disarmed the Japanese troops. A significant event following the return of the young king, Ananda Mahidol, to Thailand, intended to defuse post-war tensions lingering between Bangkok's ethnic Chinese and Thai people, was his visit to Bangkok's Chinatown Sam Peng Lane (ซอยสำเพ็ง), on 3 June 1946.
As a result of pro-Western bloc treaties Bangkok rapidly grew in the post-war period as a result of United States developmental aid and government-sponsored investment. Infrastructure, including the Don Mueang International Airport and highways, was built and expanded. Bangkok's role as an American military R&R destination launched its tourism industry as well as sex trade. Disproportionate urban development led to increasing income inequalities and unprecedented migration from rural areas into Bangkok; its population surged from 1.8 to 3 million in the 1960s. Following the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam, Japanese businesses took over as leaders in investment, and the expansion of export-oriented manufacturing led to growth of the financial market in Bangkok. Rapid growth of the city continued through the 1980s and early 1990s, until it was stalled by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. By then, many public and social issues had emerged, among them the strain on infrastructure reflected in the city's notorious traffic jams. Bangkok's role as the nation's political stage continues to be seen in strings of popular protests, from the student uprisings in 1973 and 1976, anti-military demonstrations in 1992, and successive anti-government protests by the "Yellow Shirt" and "Red Shirt" movements from 2008 on.
Administratively, eastern Bangkok and Thonburi had been established as separate provinces in 1915. (The province east of the river was named Phra Nakhon (พระนคร.) A series of decrees in 1971–1972 resulted in the merger of these provinces and its local administrations, forming the current city of Bangkok which is officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) was created in 1975 to govern the city, and its governor has been elected since 1985.
Dates Production System in Siwa Oasis, Egypt
Siwa oasis is one of the best illustrations of farmers’ ingenuity to adapt agriculture to very harsh climatic conditions. Situated in a very dry region, this oasis provides an e ective way to grow food, livestock and preserve wild ora and fauna, which rely on very scarce water. This systems is based on date palm agriculture combined with other crops such as olive trees and alfalfa allowing local people to respond to their needs. The sustainable management of water resources is strongly linked to Siwan’s cultural heritage.
Photo credit must be given Editorial use only. Copyright © West Siwa Development Project
Dates: Unknown
Maker: Thomas Maddock's Son's Co.
Place: USA: New Jersey, Trenton
Donor: Gift of T. George Abernethy
Photographer Credit: Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library
The first building of the Holy Cross church dates from the 13th century. It was destroyed in 1689 in the city fire down to its foundation walls. On the old foundations, the present church was under the influences of Voralberg Bauschule/Building School (Franz Beer, 1660-1726, and Leonhard Albrecht, 1671-1734) built. The church has a dominant three-story tower. The nave is divided by rows of columns into three naves. The Gothic choir still shows old walls. The high altar was created 1740 by Franz Lichtenauer.
Source: Seelsorgeeinheit (Pastoral care unit) Offenburg St. Ursula
The left side choir, the Josefs-Chörlein (a very small one), houses a Renaissance crucifix from 1521. The Mount of Olives, a Niche construction in the form of a Gothic chapel, arose 1524. From left to right you see the disciples Peter, John and James, behind the praying Saviour. Against the backdrop of a represented contemporarily city near the captors.
Source: Seelsorgeeinheit Offenburg St. Ursula
The Mount of Olives is considered the artistically most valuable monument of Offenburg. The crucifix on church square next to the Mount of Olives recalls that there was once the old cemetery. The crucifix was probably created in 1521 by Andreas von Urach. Today's sculpture is a copy of Peter Valentin the Elder.
Der erste Bau der Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche stammt aus dem 13. Jahrhundert. Er wurde beim Stadtbrand von 1689 bis auf die Grundmauern zerstört. Auf den alten Grundmauern wurde die heutige Kirche unter den Einflüssen der Voralberger Bauschule (Franz Beer, 1660 - 1726, und Leonhard Albrecht, 1671 - 1734) errichtet. Die Kirche hat einen dominierenden dreistöckigen Turm. Das Langhaus ist durch Pfeilerreihen in drei Schiffe geteilt. Der gotische Chor zeigt noch alte Mauern. Der Hochaltar wurde 1740 von Franz Lichtenauer geschaffen.
Quelle: Seelsorgeeinheit Offenburg St. Ursula
Der linke Seitenchor, das Josefs-Chörlein, beherbergt ein Renaissance-Kruzifix aus dem Jahre 1521. Der Ölberg, ein Nischenbau in Form einer gotischen Kapelle, enstand 1524. Von rechts nach links sieht man die Jünger Petrus, Johannes und Jakobus, dahinter den betenden Heiland. Vor dem Hintergrund einer einer zeitgenössisch dargestellten Stadt nahen die Häscher.
Quelle: Seelsorgeeinheit Offenburg St. Ursula
Der Ölberg gilt als Offenburgs wertvollstes Kunstdenkmal. Das Kruzifix auf dem Kirchplatz neben dem Ölberg erinnert daran, dass dort der alte Friedhof war. Das Kruzifix wurde 1521 wahrscheinlich von Andreas von Urach geschaffen. Die heutige Skulptur ist eine Kopie von Peter Valentin dem Älteren.
kath-offenburg.de/html/pfarrkirche934.html?t=505b31222bfd...
Volunteer: Nemesia & Jo Lynch - Volunteer Dates: Oct 02 - Nov 10, 2013 - Location: La Serena Chile Project: Orphanage Support
www.abroaderview.org/feedbacks/chile/395-nemesia-jo-lynch...
Our favorite memories...
Nemesia: There is many to choose from but my favorite memory from working at the home was our last day when we gave the Tias we had been working with cards that we had translated what we wanted to say into Spanish. The Tia I worked with actually cried as I was finally able to tell her I admired her and that she made me proud of my Chilean heritage.
My favorite part of staying in our accommodation was being escorted by the two dogs that lived down the road every morning to the bus stop. Everywhere we went in La Serena, including the shopping centres, we had a dog follow or escort us there! It was great company.
Jo: I became very close to one particular baby girl who I was told, was very unsettled around men before I came. We bought her a little present when we left and despite being sick she was still really excited when we handed it to her, waving her arms around and squealing.
We were surprised that:
Nemesia: Before we came to La Serena we were in Cusco Perú which has a huge tourism industry and it's not to hard to find someone who speaks English there. I was surprised that almost no one spoke English in La Serena. It was actually very helpful because it forced me to work harder on my Spanish.
Jo: I was surprised that the home was as well organized and clean as it was; despite the little funding they receive.
The most difficult thing we experienced was:
Nemesia: It can be very hard working with children and not getting emotionally attached to them and wishing you could do more for them. I just had to keep reminding myself of the fantastic work the Tias do and that they genuinely love and care for each and every child with the little they have.
Jo: Language barrier!
Our best received lessons:
Nemesia: Each day I would learn a little more about taking care of children from 10 days to 18 months old from watching the Tias; from changing nappies to feeding and burping. I am definitely a pro now at getting babies to sleep! (which I am sure will help in the future)
I also learnt a lot of Chilean slang by just listening to the conversations around me which put a lot of words that my Chilean family say into context for me which was a really fun experience. The Tias have such great senses of humour; they made learning Spanish funny.
Jo: Feeding a one year old without making a mess! Very challenging!
Tips for future volunteers:
Nemesia: Be prepared to get sick! The children are constantly battling the flu as they no sooner get better and get it from another child in the home; so be prepared to get the flu for a couple days. There is a juice stand on the way to the orphanage, we tried to drink as much orange juice as we could to combat the flu.
St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. Its dedication in honour of Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The present structure, which was completed in 1710, is a Grade I listed building that was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. The cathedral's reconstruction was part of a major rebuilding programme initiated in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London. The earlier Gothic cathedral (Old St Paul's Cathedral), largely destroyed in the Great Fire, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St Paul's Churchyard, being the site of St Paul's Cross.
The cathedral is one of the most famous and recognisable sights of London. Its dome, surrounded by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the skyline for over 300 years. At 365 ft (111 m) high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963. The dome is still one of the highest in the world. St Paul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom, after Liverpool Cathedral.
Services held at St Paul's have included the funerals of Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria; an inauguration service for the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund; peace services marking the end of the First and Second World Wars; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer; the launch of the Festival of Britain; and the thanksgiving services for the Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinum Jubilees and the 80th and 90th birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded by the smoke and fire of the Blitz. The cathedral is a working church with hourly prayer and daily services. The tourist entry fee at the door is £23 for adults (January 2023, cheaper if booked online), but no charges are made to worshippers attending advertised services.
The nearest London Underground station is St Paul's, which is 130 yards (120 m) away from St Paul's Cathedral.
History
Before the cathedral
The location of Londinium's original cathedral is unknown, but legend and medieval tradition claims it was St Peter upon Cornhill. St Paul is an unusual attribution for a cathedral, and suggests there was another one in the Roman period. Legends of St Lucius link St Peter upon Cornhill as the centre of the Roman Londinium Christian community. It stands upon the highest point in the area of old Londinium, and it was given pre-eminence in medieval procession on account of the legends. There is, however, no other reliable evidence and the location of the site on the Forum makes it difficult for it to fit the legendary stories. In 1995, a large fifth-century building on Tower Hill was excavated, and has been claimed as a Roman basilica, possibly a cathedral, although this is speculative.
The Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden argued that a temple to the goddess Diana had stood during Roman times on the site occupied by the medieval St Paul's Cathedral. Wren reported that he had found no trace of any such temple during the works to build the new cathedral after the Great Fire, and Camden's hypothesis is no longer accepted by modern archaeologists.
Pre-Norman cathedral
There is evidence for Christianity in London during the Roman period, but no firm evidence for the location of churches or a cathedral. Bishop Restitutus is said to have represented London at the Council of Arles in 314 AD. A list of the 16 "archbishops" of London was recorded by Jocelyn of Furness in the 12th century, claiming London's Christian community was founded in the second century under the legendary King Lucius and his missionary saints Fagan, Deruvian, Elvanus and Medwin. None of that is considered credible by modern historians but, although the surviving text is problematic, either Bishop Restitutus or Adelphius at the 314 Council of Arles seems to have come from Londinium.
Bede records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop. It is assumed, although not proved, that this first Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the later medieval and the present cathedrals.
On the death of Sæberht in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Mellitus from London, and the East Saxons reverted to paganism. The fate of the first cathedral building is unknown. Christianity was restored among the East Saxons in the late seventh century and it is presumed that either the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was restored or a new building erected as the seat of bishops such as Cedd, Wine and Erkenwald, the last of whom was buried in the cathedral in 693.
Earconwald was consecrated bishop of London in 675, and is said to have bestowed great cost on the fabric, and in later times he almost occupied the place of traditionary, founder: the veneration paid to him is second only to that which was rendered to St. Paul. Erkenwald would become a subject of the important High Medieval poem St Erkenwald.
King Æthelred the Unready was buried in the cathedral on his death in 1016; the tomb is now lost. The cathedral was burnt, with much of the city, in a fire in 1087, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Old St Paul's
The fourth St Paul's, generally referred to as Old St Paul's, was begun by the Normans after the 1087 fire. A further fire in 1135 disrupted the work, and the new cathedral was not consecrated until 1240. During the period of construction, the style of architecture had changed from Romanesque to Gothic and this was reflected in the pointed arches and larger windows of the upper parts and East End of the building. The Gothic ribbed vault was constructed, like that of York Minster, of wood rather than stone, which affected the ultimate fate of the building.
An enlargement programme commenced in 1256. This "New Work" was consecrated in 1300 but not complete until 1314. During the later Medieval period St Paul's was exceeded in length only by the Abbey Church of Cluny and in the height of its spire only by Lincoln Cathedral and St. Mary's Church, Stralsund. Excavations by Francis Penrose in 1878 showed that it was 585 feet (178 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide (290 feet (88 m) across the transepts and crossing). The spire was about 489 feet (149 m) in height.[citation needed] By the 16th century the building was deteriorating.
The English Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI (accelerated by the Chantries Acts) led to the destruction of elements of the interior ornamentation and the chapels, shrines, and chantries.
The would come to include the removal of the cathedral's collection of relics, which by the sixteenth century was understood to include:
the body of St Erkenwald
both arms of St Mellitus
a knife thought to belong to Jesus
hair of Mary Magdalen
blood of St Paul
milk of the Virgin Mary
the head of St John
the skull of Thomas Becket
the head and jaw of King Ethelbert
part of the wood of the cross,
a stone of the Holy Sepulchre,
a stone from the spot of the Ascension, and
some bones of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne.
Old St Paul's in 1656 by Wenceslaus Hollar, showing the rebuilt west facade
In October 1538, an image of St Erkenwald, probably from the shrine, was delivered to the master of the king's jewels. Other images may have survived, at least for a time. More systematic iconoclasm happened in the reign of Edward VI: the Grey Friar's Chronicle reports that the rood and other images were destroyed in November 1547.
In late 1549, at the height of the iconoclasm of the reformation, Sir Rowland Hill altered the route of his Lord Mayor's day procession and said a de profundis at the tomb of Erkenwald. Later in Hill's mayoralty of (1550) the high altar of St Paul's was removed overnight to be destroyed, an occurrence that provoked a fight in which a man was killed. Hill had ordered, unusually for the time, that St Barnabus's Day would not be kept as a public holiday ahead of these events.
Three years later, by October 1553, "Alle the alteres and chappelles in alle Powlles churche" were taken down.[19] In August, 1553, the dean and chapter were cited to appear before Queen Mary's commissioners.
Some of the buildings in the St Paul's churchyard were sold as shops and rental properties, especially to printers and booksellers. In 1561 the spire was destroyed by a lightning strike, an event that Roman Catholic writers claimed was a sign of God's judgment on England's Protestant rulers. Bishop James Pilkington preached a sermon in response, claiming that the lightning strike was a judgement for the irreverent use of the cathedral building. Immediate steps were taken to repair the damage, with the citizens of London and the clergy offering money to support the rebuilding. However, the cost of repairing the building properly was too great for a country and city recovering from a trade depression. Instead, the roof was repaired and a timber "roo"’ put on the steeple.
In the 1630s a west front was added to the building by England's first classical architect, Inigo Jones. There was much defacing and mistreatment of the building by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War, and the old documents and charters were dispersed and destroyed. During the Commonwealth, those churchyard buildings that were razed supplied ready-dressed building material for construction projects, such as the Lord Protector's city palace, Somerset House. Crowds were drawn to the north-east corner of the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, where open-air preaching took place.
In the Great Fire of London of 1666, Old St Paul's was gutted. While it might have been possible to reconstruct it, a decision was taken to build a new cathedral in a modern style. This course of action had been proposed even before the fire.
Present St Paul's
The task of designing a replacement structure was officially assigned to Sir Christopher Wren on 30 July 1669. He had previously been put in charge of the rebuilding of churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire. More than 50 city churches are attributable to Wren. Concurrent with designing St Paul's, Wren was engaged in the production of his five Tracts on Architecture.
Wren had begun advising on the repair of the Old St Paul's in 1661, five years before the fire in 1666. The proposed work included renovations to interior and exterior to complement the classical facade designed by Inigo Jones in 1630. Wren planned to replace the dilapidated tower with a dome, using the existing structure as a scaffold. He produced a drawing of the proposed dome which shows his idea that it should span nave and aisles at the crossing. After the Fire, it was at first thought possible to retain a substantial part of the old cathedral, but ultimately the entire structure was demolished in the early 1670s.
In July 1668 Dean William Sancroft wrote to Wren that he was charged by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in agreement with the Bishops of London and Oxford, to design a new cathedral that was "Handsome and noble to all the ends of it and to the reputation of the City and the nation". The design process took several years, but a design was finally settled and attached to a royal warrant, with the proviso that Wren was permitted to make any further changes that he deemed necessary. The result was the present St Paul's Cathedral, still the second largest church in Britain, with a dome proclaimed as the finest in the world. The building was financed by a tax on coal, and was completed within its architect's lifetime with many of the major contractors engaged for the duration.
The "topping out" of the cathedral (when the final stone was placed on the lantern) took place on 26 October 1708, performed by Wren's son Christopher Jr and the son of one of the masons. The cathedral was declared officially complete by Parliament on 25 December 1711 (Christmas Day). In fact, construction continued for several years after that, with the statues on the roof added in the 1720s. In 1716 the total costs amounted to £1,095,556 (£174 million in 2021).
Consecration
On 2 December 1697, 31 years and 3 months after the Great Fire destroyed Old St Paul's, the new cathedral was consecrated for use. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preached the sermon. It was based on the text of Psalm 122, "I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord." The first regular service was held on the following Sunday.
Opinions of Wren's cathedral differed, with some loving it: "Without, within, below, above, the eye / Is filled with unrestrained delight", while others hated it: "There was an air of Popery about the gilded capitals, the heavy arches ... They were unfamiliar, un-English ...".
Since 1900
St. Paul's was the target of two suffragette bombing attacks in 1913 and 1914 respectively, which nearly caused the destruction of the cathedral. This was as part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign between 1912 and 1914, in which suffragettes from the Women's Social and Political Union, as part of their campaign for women's suffrage, carried out a series of politically motivated bombings and arson nationwide. Churches were explicitly targeted by the suffragettes as they believed the Church of England was complicit in reinforcing opposition to women's suffrage. Between 1913 and 1914, 32 churches across Britain were attacked.
The first attack on St. Paul's occurred on 8 May 1913, at the start of a sermon. A bomb was heard ticking and discovered as people were entering the cathedral. It was made out of potassium nitrate. Had it exploded, the bomb likely would have destroyed the historic bishop's throne and other parts of the cathedral. The remains of the device, which was made partly out of a mustard tin, are now on display at the City of London Police Museum.
A second bombing of the cathedral by the suffragettes was attempted on 13 June 1914, however the bomb was again discovered before it could explode. This attempted bombing occurred two days after a bomb had exploded at Westminster Abbey, which damaged the Coronation Chair and caused a mass panic for the exits. Several other churches were bombed at this time, such as St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square and the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
War damage
The cathedral survived the Blitz although struck by bombs on 10 October 1940 and 17 April 1941. The first strike destroyed the high altar, while the second strike on the north transept left a hole in the floor above the crypt. The latter bomb is believed to have detonated in the upper interior above the north transept and the force was sufficient to shift the entire dome laterally by a small amount.
On 12 September 1940 a time-delayed bomb that had struck the cathedral was successfully defused and removed by a bomb disposal detachment of Royal Engineers under the command of Temporary Lieutenant Robert Davies. Had this bomb detonated, it would have totally destroyed the cathedral; it left a 100-foot (30 m) crater when later remotely detonated in a secure location. As a result of this action, Davies and Sapper George Cameron Wylie were each awarded the George Cross. Davies' George Cross and other medals are on display at the Imperial War Museum, London.
One of the best known images of London during the war was a photograph of St Paul's taken on 29 December 1940 during the "Second Great Fire of London" by photographer Herbert Mason, from the roof of a building in Tudor Street showing the cathedral shrouded in smoke. Lisa Jardine of Queen Mary, University of London, has written:
Wreathed in billowing smoke, amidst the chaos and destruction of war, the pale dome stands proud and glorious—indomitable. At the height of that air-raid, Sir Winston Churchill telephoned the Guildhall to insist that all fire-fighting resources be directed at St Paul's. The cathedral must be saved, he said, damage to the fabric would sap the morale of the country.
Post-war
On 29 July 1981, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer was held at the cathedral. The couple selected St Paul's over Westminster Abbey, the traditional site of royal weddings, because the cathedral offered more seating.
Extensive copper, lead and slate renovation work was carried out on the Dome in 1996 by John B. Chambers. A 15-year restoration project—one of the largest ever undertaken in the UK—was completed on 15 June 2011.
Occupy London
In October 2011 an anti-capitalism Occupy London encampment was established in front of the cathedral, after failing to gain access to the London Stock Exchange at Paternoster Square nearby. The cathedral's finances were affected by the ensuing closure. It was claimed that the cathedral was losing revenue of £20,000 per day. Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser resigned, asserting his view that "evicting the anti-capitalist activists would constitute violence in the name of the Church". The Dean of St Paul's, the Right Revd Graeme Knowles, then resigned too. The encampment was evicted at the end of February 2012, by court order and without violence, as a result of legal action by the City of London Corporation.
2019 terrorist plot
On 10 October 2019, Safiyya Amira Shaikh, a Muslim convert, was arrested following an MI5 and Metropolitan Police investigation. In September 2019, she had taken photos of the cathedral's interior. While trying to radicalise others using the Telegram messaging software, she planned to attack the cathedral and other targets such as a hotel and a train station using explosives. Shaikh pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
National events
The size and location of St Paul's has made it an ideal setting for Christian services marking great national events. The opportunity for long processions culminating in the dramatic approach up Ludgate Hill, the open area and steps at the west front, the great nave and the space under the dome are all well suited for ceremonial occasions. St Paul's can seat many more people than any other church in London, and in past centuries, the erection of temporary wooden galleries inside allowed for congregations exceeding 10,000. In 1935, the dean, Walter Matthews, wrote:
No description in words can convey an adequate idea of the majestic beauty of a solemn national religious ceremony in St Paul's. It is hard to believe that there is any other building in the world that is so well adapted to be the setting of such symbolical acts of communal worship.
National events attended by the royal family, government ministers and officers of state include national services of thanksgiving, state funerals and a royal wedding. Some of the most notable examples are:
Thanksgiving service for the Acts of Union 1707, 1 May 1707
State funeral of Horatio Nelson, 9 January 1806
State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, 18 November 1852
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, 22 June 1897
Thanksgiving service for the Treaty of Versailles, 6 July 1919
Silver Jubilee of George V, 6 May 1935
Thanksgiving services for VE Day and VJ Day, 13 May and 19 August 1945
Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 7 June 1977
Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, 29 July 1981
Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 4 June 2002
Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 5 June 2012
Ceremonial funeral of Margaret Thatcher, 17 April 2013
Thanksgiving service for the Queen's 90th Birthday, 10 June 2016
Platinum Jubilee National Service of Thanksgiving, 3 June 2022
Ministry and functions
St Paul's Cathedral is a busy church with four or five services every day, including Matins, Eucharist and Evening Prayer or Choral Evensong. In addition, the cathedral has many special services associated with the City of London, its corporation, guilds and institutions. The cathedral, as the largest church in London, also has a role in many state functions such as the service celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The cathedral is generally open daily to tourists and has a regular programme of organ recitals and other performances. The Bishop of London is Sarah Mullally, whose appointment was announced in December 2017 and whose enthronement took place in May 2018.
Dean and chapter
The cathedral chapter is currently composed of seven individuals: the dean, three residentiary canons (one of whom is, exceptionally, lay), one "additional member of chapter and canon non-residentiary" (ordained), and two lay canons. Each has a different responsibility in the running of the cathedral. As of October 2022:
Dean — Andrew Tremlett (since 25 September 2022)
Precentor — James Milne (since 9 May 2019)
Treasurer — vacant
Chancellor — Paula Gooder (since 9 May 2019; lay reader since 23 February 2019)
Steward — Neil Evans (since June 2022)
Additional member of chapter and canon non-residentiary — Sheila Watson (since January 2017).
Lay Canon — Pamela (Pim) Jane Baxter (since March 2014). Deputy Director at the National Portrait Gallery, with experience in opera, theatre and the visual arts.
Lay Canon — Sheila Nicoll (since October 2018). She is Head of Public Policy at Schroder Investment Management.
Lay Canon — Clement Hutton-Mills (since March 2021). He is also a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.
Lay Canon — Gillian Bowen (since June 2022). She is Chief Executive Officer of YMCA London City and North and is a magistrate.
Director of Music
The Director of Music is Andrew Carwood. Carwood was appointed to succeed Malcolm Archer as Director of Music, taking up the post in September 2007. He is the first non-organist to hold the post since the 12th century.
Paul's Cathedral
Organs
An organ was commissioned from Bernard Smith in 1694.
In 1862 the organ from the Panopticon of Science and Art (the Panopticon Organ) was installed in a gallery over the south transept door.
The Grand Organ was completed in 1872, and the Panopticon Organ moved to the Victoria Rooms in Clifton in 1873.
The Grand Organ is the fifth-largest in Great Britain, in terms of number of pipes (7,256), with 5 manuals, 136 ranks of pipes and 137 stops, principally enclosed in an impressive case designed in Wren's workshop and decorated by Grinling Gibbons.
Details of the organ can be found online at the National Pipe Organ Register.
Choir
St Paul's Cathedral has a full professional choir, which sings regularly at services. The earliest records of the choir date from 1127. The present choir consists of up to 30 boy choristers, eight probationers and the vicars choral, 12 professional singers. In February 2017 the cathedral announced the appointment of the first female vicar choral, Carris Jones (a mezzo-soprano), to take up the role in September 2017. In 2022, it was announced that girls would be admitted to a cathedral choir in 2025.
During school terms the choir sings Evensong six times per week, the service on Mondays being sung by a visiting choir (or occasionally said) and that on Thursdays being sung by the vicars choral alone. On Sundays the choir also sings at Mattins and the 11:30 am Eucharist.
Many distinguished musicians have been organists, choir masters and choristers at St Paul's Cathedral, including the composers John Redford, Thomas Morley, John Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Maurice Greene and John Stainer, while well-known performers have included Alfred Deller, John Shirley-Quirk and Anthony Way as well as the conductors Charles Groves and Paul Hillier and the poet Walter de la Mare.
Wren's cathedral
In designing St Paul's, Christopher Wren had to meet many challenges. He had to create a fitting cathedral to replace Old St Paul's, as a place of worship and as a landmark within the City of London. He had to satisfy the requirements of the church and the tastes of a royal patron, as well as respecting the essentially medieval tradition of English church building which developed to accommodate the liturgy. Wren was familiar with contemporary Renaissance and Baroque trends in Italian architecture and had visited France, where he studied the work of François Mansart.
Wren's design developed through five general stages. The first survives only as a single drawing and part of a model. The scheme (usually called the First Model Design) appears to have consisted of a circular domed vestibule (possibly based on the Pantheon in Rome) and a rectangular church of basilica form. The plan may have been influenced by the Temple Church. It was rejected because it was not thought "stately enough". Wren's second design was a Greek cross, which was thought by the clerics not to fulfil the requirements of Anglican liturgy.
Wren's third design is embodied in the "Great Model" of 1673. The model, made of oak and plaster, cost over £500 (approximately £32,000 today) and is over 13 feet (4 m) tall and 21 feet (6 m) long. This design retained the form of the Greek-Cross design but extended it with a nave. His critics, members of a committee commissioned to rebuild the church, and clergy decried the design as too dissimilar to other English churches to suggest any continuity within the Church of England. Another problem was that the entire design would have to be completed all at once because of the eight central piers that supported the dome, instead of being completed in stages and opened for use before construction finished, as was customary. The Great Model was Wren's favourite design; he thought it a reflection of Renaissance beauty. After the Great Model, Wren resolved not to make further models and not to expose his drawings publicly, which he found did nothing but "lose time, and subject [his] business many times, to incompetent judges". The Great Model survives and is housed within the cathedral itself.
Wren's fourth design is known as the Warrant design because it received a Royal warrant for the rebuilding. In this design Wren sought to reconcile Gothic, the predominant style of English churches, to a "better manner of architecture". It has the longitudinal Latin Cross plan of a medieval cathedral. It is of 1+1⁄2 storeys and has classical porticos at the west and transept ends, influenced by Inigo Jones's addition to Old St Paul's. It is roofed at the crossing by a wide shallow dome supporting a drum with a second cupola, from which rises a spire of seven diminishing stages. Vaughan Hart has suggested that influence in the design of the spire may have been drawn from the oriental pagoda. Not used at St Paul's, the concept was applied in the spire of St Bride's, Fleet Street. This plan was rotated slightly on its site so that it aligned, not with true east, but with sunrise on Easter of the year construction began. This small change in configuration was informed by Wren's knowledge of astronomy.
Final design
The final design as built differs substantially from the official Warrant design. Wren received permission from the king to make "ornamental changes" to the submitted design, and Wren took great advantage of this. Many of these changes were made over the course of the thirty years as the church was constructed, and the most significant was to the dome: "He raised another structure over the first cupola, a cone of brick, so as to support a stone lantern of an elegant figure ... And he covered and hid out of sight the brick cone with another cupola of timber and lead; and between this and the cone are easy stairs that ascend to the lantern" (Christopher Wren, son of Sir Christopher Wren). The final design was strongly rooted in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The saucer domes over the nave were inspired by François Mansart's Church of the Val-de-Grâce, which Wren had seen during a trip to Paris in 1665.
The date of the laying of the first stone of the cathedral is disputed. One contemporary account says it was 21 June 1675, another 25 June and a third on 28 June. There is, however, general agreement that it was laid in June 1675. Edward Strong later claimed it was laid by his elder brother, Thomas Strong, one of the two master stonemasons appointed by Wren at the beginning of the work.
Structural engineering
Wren's challenge was to construct a large cathedral on the relatively weak clay soil of London. St Paul's is unusual among cathedrals in that there is a crypt, the largest in Europe, under the entire building rather than just under the eastern end. The crypt serves a structural purpose. Although it is extensive, half the space of the crypt is taken up by massive piers which spread the weight of the much slimmer piers of the church above. While the towers and domes of most cathedrals are supported on four piers, Wren designed the dome of St Paul's to be supported on eight, achieving a broader distribution of weight at the level of the foundations. The foundations settled as the building progressed, and Wren made structural changes in response.
One of the design problems that confronted Wren was to create a landmark dome, tall enough to visually replace the lost tower of St Paul's, while at the same time appearing visually satisfying when viewed from inside the building. Wren planned a double-shelled dome, as at St Peter's Basilica. His solution to the visual problem was to separate the heights of the inner and outer dome to a much greater extent than had been done by Michelangelo at St Peter's, drafting both as catenary curves, rather than as hemispheres. Between the inner and outer domes, Wren inserted a brick cone which supports both the timbers of the outer, lead-covered dome and the weight of the ornate stone lantern that rises above it. Both the cone and the inner dome are 18 inches thick and are supported by wrought iron chains at intervals in the brick cone and around the cornice of the peristyle of the inner dome to prevent spreading and cracking.
The Warrant Design showed external buttresses on the ground floor level. These were not a classical feature and were one of the first elements Wren changed. Instead he made the walls of the cathedral particularly thick to avoid the need for external buttresses altogether. The clerestory and vault are reinforced with flying buttresses, which were added at a relatively late stage in the design to give extra strength. These are concealed behind the screen wall of the upper story, which was added to keep the building's classical style intact, to add sufficient visual mass to balance the appearance of the dome and which, by its weight, counters the thrust of the buttresses on the lower walls.
Designers, builders and craftsmen
During the extensive period of design and rationalisation, Wren employed from 1684 Nicholas Hawksmoor as his principal assistant. Between 1696 and 1711 William Dickinson was measuring clerk. Joshua Marshall (until his early death in 1678) and Thomas and his brother Edward Strong were master masons, the latter two working on the construction for its entirety. John Langland was the master carpenter for over thirty years. Grinling Gibbons was the chief sculptor, working in both stone on the building itself, including the pediment of the north portal, and wood on the internal fittings. The sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber created the pediment of the south transept while Francis Bird was responsible for the relief in the west pediment depicting the Conversion of St Paul, as well as the seven large statues on the west front. The floor was paved by William Dickinson in black and white marble in 1709–10 Jean Tijou was responsible for the decorative wrought ironwork of gates and balustrades. The ball and cross on the dome were provided by an armorer, Andrew Niblett. Following the war damage mentioned above, many craftsmen were employed to restore the wood carvings and stone work that had been destroyed by the bomb impact. One of particular note is Master Carver, Gino Masero who was commissioned to carve the replacement figure of Christ, an eight-foot sculpture in lime which currently stands on the High Altar.
Description
St Paul's Cathedral is built in a restrained Baroque style which represents Wren's rationalisation of the traditions of English medieval cathedrals with the inspiration of Palladio, the classical style of Inigo Jones, the baroque style of 17th century Rome, and the buildings by Mansart and others that he had seen in France. It is particularly in its plan that St Paul's reveals medieval influences. Like the great medieval cathedrals of York and Winchester, St Paul's is comparatively long for its width, and has strongly projecting transepts. It has much emphasis on its facade, which has been designed to define rather than conceal the form of the building behind it. In plan, the towers jut beyond the width of the aisles as they do at Wells Cathedral. Wren's uncle Matthew Wren was the Bishop of Ely, and, having worked for his uncle, Wren was familiar with the unique octagonal lantern tower over the crossing of Ely Cathedral, which spans the aisles as well as the central nave, unlike the central towers and domes of most churches. Wren adapted this characteristic in designing the dome of St Paul's.[91] In section St Paul's also maintains a medieval form, having the aisles much lower than the nave, and a defined clerestory.
Exterior
The most renowned exterior feature is the dome, which rises 365 feet (111 m) to the cross at its summit, and dominates views of the city. The height of 365 feet is explained by Wren's interest in astronomy. Until the late 20th century St Paul's was the tallest building on the City skyline, designed to be seen surrounded by the delicate spires of Wren's other city churches. The dome is described by Sir Banister Fletcher as "probably the finest in Europe", by Helen Gardner as "majestic", and by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "one of the most perfect in the world". Sir John Summerson said that Englishmen and "even some foreigners" consider it to be without equal.
Dome
Wren drew inspiration from Michelangelo's dome of St Peter's Basilica, and that of Mansart's Church of the Val-de-Grâce, which he had visited. Unlike those of St Peter's and Val-de-Grâce, the dome of St Paul's rises in two clearly defined storeys of masonry, which, together with a lower unadorned footing, equal a height of about 95 feet. From the time of the Greek Cross Design it is clear that Wren favoured a continuous colonnade (peristyle) around the drum of the dome, rather than the arrangement of alternating windows and projecting columns that Michelangelo had used and which had also been employed by Mansart. Summerson suggests that he was influenced by Bramante's "Tempietto" in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio. In the finished structure, Wren creates a diversity and appearance of strength by placing niches between the columns in every fourth opening. The peristyle serves to buttress both the inner dome and the brick cone which rises internally to support the lantern.
Above the peristyle rises the second stage surrounded by a balustraded balcony called the "Stone Gallery". This attic stage is ornamented with alternating pilasters and rectangular windows which are set just below the cornice, creating a sense of lightness. Above this attic rises the dome, covered with lead, and ribbed in accordance with the spacing of the pilasters. It is pierced by eight light wells just below the lantern, but these are barely visible. They allow light to penetrate through openings in the brick cone, which illuminates the interior apex of this shell, partly visible from within the cathedral through the ocular opening of the lower dome.
The lantern, like the visible masonry of the dome, rises in stages. The most unusual characteristic of this structure is that it is of square plan, rather than circular or octagonal. The tallest stage takes the form of a tempietto with four columned porticos facing the cardinal points. Its lowest level is surrounded by the "Golden Gallery" and its upper level supports a small dome from which rises a cross on a golden ball. The total weight of the lantern is about 850 tons.
West front
For the Renaissance architect designing the west front of a large church or cathedral, the universal problem was how to use a facade to unite the high central nave with the lower aisles in a visually harmonious whole. Since Alberti's additions to Santa Maria Novella in Florence, this was usually achieved by the simple expedient of linking the sides to the centre with large brackets. This is the solution that Wren saw employed by Mansart at Val-de-Grâce. Another feature employed by Mansart was a boldly projecting Classical portico with paired columns. Wren faced the additional challenge of incorporating towers into the design, as had been planned at St Peter's Basilica. At St Peter's, Carlo Maderno had solved this problem by constructing a narthex and stretching a huge screen facade across it, differentiated at the centre by a pediment. The towers at St Peter's were not built above the parapet.
Wren's solution was to employ a Classical portico, as at Val-de-Grâce, but rising through two storeys, and supported on paired columns. The remarkable feature here is that the lower story of this portico extends to the full width of the aisles, while the upper section defines the nave that lies behind it. The gaps between the upper stage of the portico and the towers on either side are bridged by a narrow section of wall with an arch-topped window.
The towers stand outside the width of the aisles, but screen two chapels located immediately behind them. The lower parts of the towers continue the theme of the outer walls, but are differentiated from them in order to create an appearance of strength. The windows of the lower story are smaller than those of the side walls and are deeply recessed, a visual indication of the thickness of the wall. The paired pilasters at each corner project boldly.
Above the main cornice, which unites the towers with the portico and the outer walls, the details are boldly scaled, in order to read well from the street below and from a distance. The towers rise above the cornice from a square block plinth which is plain apart from large oculi, that on the south being filled by the clock, while that on the north is void. The towers are composed of two complementary elements, a central cylinder rising through the tiers in a series of stacked drums, and paired Corinthian columns at the corners, with buttresses above them, which serve to unify the drum shape with the square plinth on which it stands. The entablature above the columns breaks forward over them to express both elements, tying them together in a single horizontal band. The cap, an ogee-shaped dome, supports a gilded finial in the form of a pineapple.
The transepts each have a semi-circular entrance portico. Wren was inspired in the design by studying engravings of Pietro da Cortona's Baroque facade of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. These projecting arcs echo the shape of the apse at the eastern end of the building.
Walls
The building is of two storeys of ashlar masonry, above a basement, and surrounded by a balustrade above the upper cornice. The balustrade was added, against Wren's wishes, in 1718. The internal bays are marked externally by paired pilasters with Corinthian capitals at the lower level and Composite at the upper level. Where the building behind is of only one story (at the aisles of both nave and choir) the upper story of the exterior wall is sham. It serves a dual purpose of supporting the buttresses of the vault, and providing a satisfying appearance when viewed rising above buildings of the height of the 17th-century city. This appearance may still be seen from across the River Thames.
Between the pilasters on both levels are windows. Those of the lower storey have semi-circular heads and are surrounded by continuous mouldings of a Roman style, rising to decorative keystones. Beneath each window is a floral swag by Grinling Gibbons, constituting the finest stone carving on the building and some of the greatest architectural sculpture in England. A frieze with similar swags runs in a band below the cornice, tying the arches of the windows and the capitals. The upper windows are of a restrained Classical form, with pediments set on columns, but are blind and contain niches. Beneath these niches, and in the basement level, are small windows with segmental tops, the glazing of which catches the light and visually links them to the large windows of the aisles. The height from ground level to the top of the parapet is approximately 110 feet.
Fencing
The original fencing, designed by Wren, was dismantled in the 1870s. The surveyor for the government of Toronto had it shipped to Toronto, where it has since adorned High Park.
Interior
Internally, St Paul's has a nave and choir in each of its three bays. The entrance from the west portico is through a square domed narthex, flanked by chapels: the Chapel of St Dunstan to the north and the Chapel of the Order of St Michael and St George to the south. The nave is 91 feet (28 m) in height and is separated from the aisles by an arcade of piers with attached Corinthian pilasters rising to an entablature. The bays, and therefore the vault compartments, are rectangular, but Wren roofed these spaces with saucer-shaped domes and surrounded the clerestory windows with lunettes. The vaults of the choir are decorated with mosaics by Sir William Blake Richmond. The dome and the apse of the choir are all approached through wide arches with coffered vaults which contrast with the smooth surface of the domes and punctuate the division between the main spaces. The transepts extend to the north and south of the dome and are called (in this instance) the North Choir and the South Choir.
The choir holds the stalls for the clergy, cathedral officers and the choir, and the organ. These wooden fittings, including the pulpit and Bishop's throne, were designed in Wren's office and built by joiners. The carvings are the work of Grinling Gibbons whom Summerson describes as having "astonishing facility", suggesting that Gibbons aim was to reproduce popular Dutch flower painting in wood. Jean Tijou, a French metalworker, provided various wrought iron and gilt grilles, gates and balustrades of elaborate design, of which many pieces have now been combined into the gates near the sanctuary.
The cathedral is some 574 feet (175 m) in length (including the portico of the Great West Door), of which 223 feet (68 m) is the nave and 167 feet (51 m) is the choir. The width of the nave is 121 feet (37 m) and across the transepts is 246 feet (75 m). The cathedral is slightly shorter but somewhat wider than Old St Paul's.
Dome
The main internal space of the cathedral is that under the central dome which extends the full width of the nave and aisles. The dome is supported on pendentives rising between eight arches spanning the nave, choir, transepts, and aisles. The eight piers that carry them are not evenly spaced. Wren has maintained an appearance of eight equal spans by inserting segmental arches to carry galleries across the ends of the aisles, and has extended the mouldings of the upper arch to appear equal to the wider arches.
Above the keystones of the arches, at 99 feet (30 m) above the floor and 112 feet (34 m) wide, runs a cornice which supports the Whispering Gallery so called because of its acoustic properties: a whisper or low murmur against its wall at any point is audible to a listener with an ear held to the wall at any other point around the gallery. It is reached by 259 steps from ground level.
The dome is raised on a tall drum surrounded by pilasters and pierced with windows in groups of three, separated by eight gilded niches containing statues, and repeating the pattern of the peristyle on the exterior. The dome rises above a gilded cornice at 173 feet (53 m) to a height of 214 feet (65 m). Its painted decoration by Sir James Thornhill shows eight scenes from the life of St Paul set in illusionistic architecture which continues the forms of the eight niches of the drum. At the apex of the dome is an oculus inspired by that of the Pantheon in Rome. Through this hole can be seen the decorated inner surface of the cone which supports the lantern. This upper space is lit by the light wells in the outer dome and openings in the brick cone. Engravings of Thornhill's paintings were published in 1720.
Apse
The eastern apse extends the width of the choir and is the full height of the main arches across choir and nave. It is decorated with mosaics, in keeping with the choir vaults. The original reredos and high altar were destroyed by bombing in 1940. The present high altar and baldacchino are the work of W. Godfrey Allen and Stephen Dykes Bower. The apse was dedicated in 1958 as the American Memorial Chapel. It was paid for entirely by donations from British people. The Roll of Honour contains the names of more than 28,000 Americans who gave their lives while on their way to, or stationed in, the United Kingdom during the Second World War. It is in front of the chapel's altar. The three windows of the apse date from 1960 and depict themes of service and sacrifice, while the insignia around the edges represent the American states and the US armed forces. The limewood panelling incorporates a rocket—a tribute to America's achievements in space.
Artworks, tombs and memorials
St Paul's at the time of its completion, was adorned by sculpture in stone and wood, most notably that of Grinling Gibbons, by the paintings in the dome by Thornhill, and by Jean Tijou's elaborate metalwork. It has been further enhanced by Sir William Richmond's mosaics and the fittings by Dykes Bower and Godfrey Allen. Other artworks in the cathedral include, in the south aisle, William Holman Hunt's copy of his painting The Light of the World, the original of which hangs in Keble College, Oxford. The St. Paul's version was completed with a significant input from Edward Robert Hughes as Hunt was now suffering from glaucoma. In the north choir aisle is a limestone sculpture of the Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, carved in 1943. The crypt contains over 200 memorials and numerous burials. Christopher Wren was the first person to be interred, in 1723. On the wall above his tomb in the crypt is written in Latin: Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice ("Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you").
The largest monument in the cathedral is that to the Duke of Wellington by Alfred Stevens. It stands on the north side of the nave and has on top a statue of Wellington astride his horse "Copenhagen". Although the equestrian figure was planned at the outset, objections to the notion of having a horse in the church prevented its installation until 1912. The horse and rider are by John Tweed. The Duke is buried in the crypt. The tomb of Horatio, Lord Nelson is located in the crypt, next to that of Wellington. The marble sarcophagus which holds his remains was made for Cardinal Wolsey but not used as the cardinal had fallen from favour. At the eastern end of the crypt is the Chapel of the Order of the British Empire, instigated in 1917, and designed by John Seely, Lord Mottistone. There are many other memorials commemorating the British military, including several lists of servicemen who died in action, the most recent being the Gulf War.
Also remembered are Florence Nightingale, J. M. W. Turner, Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, Samuel Johnson, Lawrence of Arabia, William Blake, William Jones and Sir Alexander Fleming as well as clergy and residents of the local parish. There are lists of the Bishops and cathedral Deans for the last thousand years. One of the most remarkable sculptures is that of the Dean and poet, John Donne. Before his death, Donne posed for his own memorial statue and was depicted by Nicholas Stone as wrapped in a burial shroud, and standing on a funeral urn. The sculpture, carved around 1630, is the only one to have survived the conflagration of 1666 intact. The treasury is also in the crypt but the cathedral has very few treasures as many have been lost, and on 22 December 1810 a major robbery took almost all of the remaining precious artefacts.
The funerals of many notable figures have been held in the cathedral, including those of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, George Mallory and Margaret Thatcher.
Clock and bells
A clock was installed in the south-west tower by Langley Bradley in 1709 but was worn out by the end of the 19th century. The present mechanism was built in 1893 by Smith of Derby incorporating a design of escapement by Edmund Denison Beckett similar to that used by Edward Dent on Big Ben's mechanism in 1895. The clock mechanism is 19 feet (5.8 m) long and is the most recent of the clocks introduced to St Paul's Cathedral over the centuries. Since 1969 the clock has been electrically wound with equipment designed and installed by Smith of Derby, relieving the clock custodian from the work of cranking up the heavy drive weights.
The south-west tower also contains four bells, of which Great Paul, cast in 1881 by J. W. Taylor of Taylor's bell foundry of Loughborough, at 16+1⁄2 long tons (16,800 kg) was the largest bell in the British Isles until the casting of the Olympic Bell for the 2012 London Olympics. Although the bell is traditionally sounded at 1 pm each day, Great Paul had not been rung for several years because of a broken chiming mechanism. In the 1970s the fastening mechanism that secured the clapper had fractured, sending both through the clock mechanism below and causing damage which cost £30,000 to repair. In about 1989 the clapper fractured completely, although less damage was sustained. On 31 July 2021, during the London Festival of the Bells, Great Paul rang for the first time in two decades, being hand swung by the bell ringers. The clock bells included Great Tom, which was moved from St Stephen's Chapel at the Palace of Westminster and has been recast several times, the last time by Richard Phelps. It chimes the hour and is traditionally tolled on occasions of a death in the royal family, the Bishop of London, or the Lord Mayor of London, although an exception was made at the death of the US president James Garfield. It was last tolled for the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, ringing once every minute along with other bells across the country in honor of the 96 years of her life. In 1717, Richard Phelps cast two more bells that were added as "quarter jacks" that ring on the quarter hour. Still in use today, the first weighs 13 long cwt (1,500 lb; 660 kg), is 41 inches (100 cm) in diameter and is tuned to A♭; the second weighs 35 long cwt (3,900 lb; 1,800 kg), is 58 inches (150 cm) in diameter and is tuned to E♭.
The north-west tower contains a ring of 12 bells by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough hung for change ringing. In January 2018 the bells were removed for refurbishment and were rehung in September that year, being rung again for the first time on All Saints' Day. The original service or "Communion" bell dating from 1700 and known as "the Banger" is rung before 8 am services.