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XX105 : BAC One-eleven 201AC : Royal Aircraft Establishment

Originally G-ASJD of British United, this 1-11 became an RAE Trials Aircraft.

   

The town became prominent in the 12th century, with the establishment of important Paisley Abbey.

 

The Bargarran witches were tried in Paisley in 1697. Seven were convicted and five were hanged and then burnt. This was the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.

 

Paisley expanded significantly during the Industrial Revolution as a result of its location with access to the Clyde and nearby ore, mineral and agricultural resources. Factories and mills developed leading to an increase in the town's population.

 

By the late 19th century, Paisley was a global centre of the weaving industry, giving its name to the Paisley shawl and the Paisley pattern. Despite being of a Kashmiri design, the teardrop-like pattern soon became known by Paisley's name across the western world.

 

There had been a Celtic church on the site of the monastery since the 6th century, dating back to St Mirin. After his death a shrine to the Saint was established, becoming a popular site of pilgrimage and veneration.

 

In 1163, Walter FitzAlan invited 13 Cluniac monks from Much Wenlock Priory in Shropshire to found a monastery on this site. From 1219, the establishment was run as an abbey and became In 1307, Edward I of England had the abbey burned down. It was rebuilt later in the 14th century.

 

Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert I, in 1315, who died the following year in a riding accident near the abbey. However, her unborn child was saved and later crowned King of Scotland as Robert II. As he founded the ruling dynasty of the House of Stuart, the abbey is also regarded as their birthplace. A total of six High Stewards of Scotland are buried in Paisley Abbey.

 

After the collapse of the bell tower in 1533 destroyed the aisles and transept of the church, they were not rebuilt. The abbey was dissolved in 1560 as part of the Scottish Reformation. The remaining parts of the church were then used as a parish church.

 

In 1789, the church was repaired. In 1859, the first of a series of extensive restoration works began, returning the church to its original state over time.

   

In recent years there has been a relentless and vociferous campaign by militant atheists intent on attacking and ridiculing religion. Numerous books have been written on the subject and, it seems, at every opportunity the secular establishment and media seeks out atheists or secular humanists to give what amounts to a jaundiced attack on religion.

For the most part, the opinions they express are the same old, worn out slogans we have heard over and over again, and can only be described as ideological propaganda.

 

We are all familiar with the atheist slogans such as: 'religion is irrational nonsense'.

Or that: 'believing in God is no different from believing in Santa or fairies.'

Or that: 'there is no evidence for God'.

Or that: 'religion is just a crutch for weak-minded people'

Or that: 'religion is outdated, superstitious nonsense',

Or that: 'religion is just for ignorant, unintelligent, backward people who know nothing about science'

Or that: belief in God is 'just a lazy way of filling gaps in knowledge'.

Or that: believing in God is 'like believing the Earth is flat'.

Or that: Christians 'believe in an old man in the sky with a beard'

Or that: Christians 'believe in a sky fairy'.

Or that: Christianity/the Bible was 'invented by ignorant, bronze age, goat herders'.

Or that: Belief in a God 'is just a delusion'.

Or that: Christians have 'an imaginary, invisable friend'.

Etc. etc.

As we will show later, such slogans are either ignorant nonsense, or devised as deliberate, ideological propaganda.

 

If you remember, several years ago, atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, decided to ramp up their anti-religious propaganda effort with slogans on buses. It originated in Britain, but spread to several other countries.

It was known as the Atheist Bus Campaign.

 

The Atheist Bus Campaign, set out to convince you that a loving creator God does not exist, that you have no prospect of eternal life and that all you can look forward to is eternal oblivion.

 

Atheists have no evidence to back up that assertion. In fact logic, natural law and the basic principles of the scientific method rule out their naturalistic alternative to a creator as impossible.

 

They invent all sort of bizarre scenarios to replace a supernatural first cause (God), they even try to present their fantastical, naturalistic replacements for God as 'scientific'. Please don't be taken in by it.

Their naturalistic replacements for God are illogical, they all violate natural laws and the basic principles of science.

 

Atheism is rightly referred to as the no-hope philosophy.

Their ultimate goal and pinnacle of their short life is - eternal oblivion.

And, quite perversely, they want to convince you that is all you can look forward to.

Please don't be dragged down with them into that depressing pit of hopelessness.

The Good News is that they are entirely wrong, and furthermore, it is not just an opinion. It can be satisfactorily demonstrated by logic, natural law, and the basic principle of the scientific method ......

 

Read on .... and you will understand, why atheists can never replace God, however much they try.

 

Their Atheist Bus Campaign is deceitful because atheists have no logical or scientific grounds for claiming "There's Probably No God", in fact, the evidence of applied logic and natural law, is completely the contrary. The atheist claim that there's probably no God is just an unsubstantiated opinion based only on their own ideological beliefs.

You may wonder why they inserted the word 'probably'? Obviously, they knew that if they were challenged to present evidence for the truth of their advertisement and had to defend it in court, they would be unable to do so. Science and logic can be used to prove they have no alternative to a supernatural first cause, and they know it.

 

For atheists to propose that believing there is no God, is somehow a reason to stop worrying and the recipe for an enjoyable life, is perverse in the extreme.

For most sane people it would be the opposite - a road to depression, hopelessness, and a feeling that this short existence is worthless. It will all end in oblivion, and you might as well never have lived.

 

Thankfully, atheists are demonstrably wrong, there is every reason for hope - as we will show - a loving Creator definitely does exist. Your life is not a few short, stressful and worthless years leading to eternal oblivion. You are a unique, valuable, person, specially created out of supreme love, every human life is of infinite value right from the moment of conception. Humans really are special and not just intelligent apes, or a mere collection of atoms, as atheists would have you believe You can live forever in eternal bliss - that is the gift of life the loving Creator of the universe offers you, and it is all offered for free.

 

Please don't be fooled ... people who think for themselves (the REAL freethinkers), are able to see right through the atheist hype and propaganda. Ignore the relentless bombardment of atheist propaganda, such as the atheist bus campaign. Seek out and learn the real truth and the truth will set you free.

 

Please read on and you will understand ......

Because there is a law of cause and effect, the universe can't and won't create itself from nothing.

 

Consider this ....

A creator God (or supernatural first cause) has been made redundant and the final gap (pertaining to the so-called God of the gaps) has now been filled ... who says so?

Atheists, along with the secularist pundits in the popular media.

Why do they say that?

Because they believe that the greatest brain in atheism - Stephen Hawking, has finally discovered the secret of the origin of the universe and a naturalistic replacement for God.

 

The atheist replacement for God is summed up in a single sentence written by Hawking:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing"

That is it .... problem solved - apparently!

 

The secularists in the popular media loved it, as far as they were concerned the problem certainly was solved. Hawking had finally dealt the fatal blow to all religion, especially Christianity. No need to question it, if a revered scientist of his calibre, is so sure of how the universe came into being, it must be correct.

The new atheists loved it, they wasted no time in proclaiming the ultimate triumph of 'science' over religious mythology and superstition.

 

So just how credible is the atheist claim that God has been made redundant?

And just how 'scientific' is Hawking's replacement for God?

 

Shall we analyse it?

"Because there is a law of gravity ....

So,

1) If the law of gravity existed, how is that nothing?

AND -

2) Where did the law of gravity come from?

AND -

3) How can a law of gravity exist before that which gravity relates to ... i.e. matter?

 

"the universe can and will create itself from nothing"

 

4) How can something create itself, without pre-existing its own creation?

(A) could possibly create (B), but how could (A) create (A)? Of course it can't.

 

5) What about the 'nothing' that is not really nothing, as most people understand 'nothing', but a bizarre 'nothing' in which a law of gravity exists. A nothing which is actually a 'something' where a law of gravity is presumably some sort of eternally, existent entity?

AND -

6) Is Hawking implying that the self-creation of the universe is made possible by the pre-existence of the law of gravity?

Of course, natural laws are not creative agents, they simply describe basic properties and operation of material things. They can't create anything, or cause the creation of anything. Something which is a property of something, cannot create that which it is a property of.

 

So, even if we ignore the law of cause and effect which definitively rules out a natural, first cause of the universe, the atheist notion of the universe arising of its own volition from nothing is still impossible, and can be regarded as illogical and unscientific nonsense. Hawking's naturalistic replacement for God, presented in his single sentence, and so loved by the new, atheist cabal, is obviously just contradictory and confused nonsense.

 

The truth, which atheists don't want to hear, is that atheism is intellectually and scientifically indefensible. That is why they always duck out of explaining how the concept of an uncaused, inadequate, natural first cause is possible.

The best they ever come up with, is something like "we don't really know what laws existed at the start of the universe".

However, the atheist claim that - we don't really know... is completely spurious.

We certainly do know that the Law of Cause and Effect is universal, there is no way round it.

The only reason atheists don't want to accept it, is ideological.

 

And ... isn't it strange, that the only laws atheists dispute are precisely those that interfere with their beliefs. For example, atheists seem pretty sure that one law existed .... the law of gravity (even prior to that which gravity is a property of … matter).

Why are they so sure that the law of gravity existed?

Because their naturalistic substitute for God, summed up in the sentence by Stephen Hawking, apparently requires that the law of gravity existed before anything else …..

 

Here it is again ...

‘Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing’ Stephen Hawking.

 

So, atheists DO KNOW for sure that the law of gravity existed, but they don’t really know what other laws existed at the start of the universe. They especially doubt that the Law of Cause and Effect existed.

AMAZING!

 

Well, how about this for a refutation of Hawking’s replacement for God, also summed up in a single sentence?

 

Because there is a Law of Cause and Effect, the universe can’t and won’t create itself from nothing!

 

That is something Stephen Hawking conveniently forgot.

Apparently, he accepts that the law of gravity existed, because he thinks it suits his argument, but he ignores the existence of other laws that positively destroy his argument.

 

So, now you know the truth about the best substitute for God that atheists have ever come up with.

IMPRESSED? I think not!

 

Why is it ATHEISTS that try to dispute the universality of natural laws?

 

According to their claims, atheists are supposed to be the champions of science. Yet we find in practice that it is actually theists who end up defending natural laws and the scientific method against those atheists who try to refute any laws and scientific principles that interfere with their naturalistic beliefs.

Whatever happened to the alleged conflict between science and religion?

That is revealed as purely, atheist propaganda. There is obviously much more conflict between atheism and science.

 

Why is the law of cause and effect so important?

Because it tells us that all natural entities, events and processes are contingent.

They are all subject to preceding causes. It tells us that natural entities and events are not autonomous, they cannot operate independently of causes.

That is such an important principle, it is actually the basis of the scientific method. Science is about looking for adequate causes of ALL natural events. According to science, a natural event without a cause, is a scientific impossibility.

Once you suggest such a notion, you are abandoning science and you violate the basic principle of the scientific method.

 

What about the first cause of the universe and everything?

How does that fit in?

 

Well, the first cause was obviously a unique thing, not only unique, but radically different to all NATURAL entities and occurrences. The first cause HAD to be an autonomous entity, it HAD to be eternally self-existent, self-reliant, NON-CONTINGENT ... i.e. it was completely independent of causes and the limitations that causes impose.

The first cause, by virtue of being the very first, could not have had any preceding cause, and obviously didn't require any cause for its existence. When we talk about the first cause, we mean the very first cause, i.e. FIRST means FIRST, not second or third.

The first cause also had to be capable of creating everything that followed it. It is responsible for every subsequent cause and effect that is, or has ever been. That means that nothing, nor the sum total of everything that followed the first cause, can ever be greater, in any respect, than the first cause.

So the idea that the first cause could be a natural entity or event is just ludicrous.

 

We know that the first cause is radically different to any natural entity, it is NOT contingent and that is why it is called a SUPERNATURAL entity, the Supernatural, First Cause (or Creator God). All natural events and entities ARE contingent without exception, so the first cause simply CANNOT be a natural thing.

That is the verdict of science, logic and reason. Atheists dispute the verdict of science and insist that the first cause was a 'natural' event which was somehow able to defy natural laws that govern all natural events.

Consequently, atheism can be regarded as anti-science. Which means .... the real enemy of atheism is science, not religion. And the real enemy of science is atheism, not religion.

An idea which seems to be popular with atheists at present, is a continuously, reciprocating universe, one which ends by running out of energy potential and then rewinds itself in an never ending cycle ..... this is an attempt to evade the fact that an uncaused, natural, first cause is impossible. They claim that, in this way a first cause, is not necessary. And that matter/energy is some sort of eternally existent entity.

So is it a valid solution?

 

Firstly .....

Matter/energy cannot be eternally existent in a cycle with no beginning).

Why?

Because all natural things are contingent, they have to comply with the law of cause and effect, so they cannot exist independently of causes. The nearest you could get to eternally existent matter/energy would be a very, long chain of causes and effects, but a long chain is not eternally existent, it has to have a beginning at some point. At the beginning there would still have to be a non-contingent first cause. So a long chain of causes and effects simply pushes the first cause further back in time, it can't eliminate it.

Secondly ....

It is pretty obvious that the idea of the universe simply rewinding itself in a never ending cycle, which had no beginning, is complete, unscientific nonsense. How such a proposal can be presented as serious science, beggars belief.

It seems atheists will try anything to justify their naturalist ideology. They apparently have no compunction about completely disregarding natural laws.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules out such atheist, pie-in-the-sky, origins mythology.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, the idea of a rewinding universe is tantamount to applying the discredited notion of perpetual motion - on a grand scale, to the universe.

Contingent things don't just rewind of their own accord.

The Second Law (not to mention common sense) rules it out.

Where does the renewed power or renewed energy potential come from?

If you wind up a clock, it doesn't rewind itself after it has stopped.

The universe had a beginning and it will have an end. That is what science tells us, it cannot rewind itself.

Such ridiculous, atheist musings are just a desperate attempt to wriggle out of the inevitable conclusion of logic, and the Law of Cause and Effect which are the real enemies of atheist ideology.

Once again atheism is hoisted on its own petard by natural law and science, not by religion.

 

A variation of the cyclical universe is the argument proposed by some that the universe just is?

Presumably they mean that the universe is some sort of eternally-existent entity with no beginning - and therefore not in need of a cause? Once again an eternally self-existent universe is not possible for the same reason outlined above.

In addition ....

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us the universe certainly had a beginning and will have an end. The energy potential of the universe is decreasing from an original peak at the beginning of the universe. Even the most rabid atheists seem to accept that. Which is why most of them believe in a beginning event, such as a big bang explosion.

So the question is how did it (the universe) begin to exist, not whether it began to exist?

Which takes us back to the question of the nature of the very first cause.

It can only be one of two options,

an uncaused, natural first cause

OR

an uncaused, supernatural first cause.

An uncaused, NATURAL first cause is impossible.

Thus the only possible option is a supernatural first cause, i.e. God.

 

Atheists can’t refute the Law of Cause and Effect which is so devastating to their naturalist agenda, so they regularly invent bizarre scenarios which ignore natural laws, and hope people won’t notice. If anyone does they just brush it off with remarks like “we just don’t know ” what laws existed prior to the beginning of the universe.

Sorry, the atheist apologists may not know …. but all sensible people do know, we certainly know what is impossible ….

And we certainly know that you cannot blithely step outside the constraints of natural laws and scientific principles, as atheists do, and remain credible.

We know that natural laws describe the inherent properties of matter/energy. Which means wherever matter/energy exist, the inherent properties of matter/energy also exist - and so do the natural laws that describe those properties. if the universe began, as some propose, with a cosmic egg. or a previous universe, those things are still natural entities with natural properties, and as such would be subject to natural laws. So the idea that there were natural events leading up to the origin of the universe that were not subject to natural laws is ridiculous.

The atheist claim; that we just don't know, is not valid, and should be treated as the silliness it really is.

 

The existence of the law of cause and effect is essential to the scientific method, but fatal to the atheist ideology.

SO ....

Is the law of cause and effect really universal?

 

Causation is necessary for the existence of the universe, but ALSO for the existence of any natural entities or events that may have preceded the creation of the universe.

 

In other words, causation is necessary for all matter/energy and all natural entities and occurrences, whether within the universe or elsewhere.

ALL natural entities are contingent wherever they may be, whether in some sort of cosmic egg, a big bang, a previous universe or whatever.

Contingency is an inherent character of all natural entities, so it is impossible for any natural entity to be non-contingent.

 

Which means you simply CANNOT have a natural entity which is UNCAUSED, anywhere.

If, for example, matter/energy was not contingent at the start of the universe, or before the universe began, how and why would it be contingent now?

Why would nature have changed its basic character to an inferior one?

 

If matter/energy once had such awesome, autonomous power - if it was, at some time, self-sufficient, not reliant on causes for its operation and existence, and not restricted by the limitations causes impose, it would effectively mean it was once an infinite, necessary, self-existent entity, similar to God.

 

Now if matter once had the autonomous, non-contingent powers of a god, why would it change itself to a subordinate character and role, when it became part of the universe?

Why would it change to a role where it is limited by the strictures of natural laws. And where it cannot operate without a preceding, adequate cause?

 

To claim matter/energy was, at one time, not contingent, not subject to causes (which is what atheists have to claim) – is to actually imbue it with the autonomous power of a god.

That is why atheism is really just a revamped version of pagan naturalism.

By denying the basic, contingent character of matter/nature, atheism effectively deifies nature, and credits it with godlike powers, which science clearly tells us it doesn’t possess.

 

Thus, if anyone dismisses causality, they effectively deify matter/nature.

Which means they have chosen the first of the 2 following choices …

 

1. Atheism ... the unscientific, illogical belief in a natural, uncaused god (of matter or nature) which violates natural laws - which science recognises restrict its autonomy?

 

2. Theism ... the logical belief in an uncaused, supernatural God, which created matter and the laws that govern matter. And therefore does not violate any laws, is not contingent, and thus has completely unrestricted autonomy and infinite powers?

 

Which one would you choose?

 

Which one do scientists who respect natural laws and the scientific method choose?

The great, scientific luminaries and founders of modern science, such as Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur etc., in fact, nearly all of the really great scientists and founders of modern science, had no doubts or problem understanding that choice, and they readily chose the second (theism), as the only logical option.

So, by choosing the second - a supernatural first cause – rather than meaning you are anti-science or anti-reason or some sort of uneducated, superstitious, religious nut (as atheists frequently claim) actually puts you in the greatest of scientific company.

 

To put it another way, who would you rather trust in science, such scientific giants as: Newton, Pasteur, Faraday, Von Braun, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Mendel, Marconi, Kelvin, Babbage, Pascal, Herschel, Peacock etc. who believed in a supernatural, first cause?

OR,

the likes of: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, Daniel Dennett etc. who believe in an uncaused, natural, first cause?

No contest!

 

We can see that atheists are anti-science, because they treat natural law and the whole principle of the scientific method with utter contempt, and all the while, they masquerade as the champions of science to the public.

 

The question of purpose ....

A further nail in the coffin of bogus, atheist science is the existence of order.

 

Atheists assume that the universe is purposeless, but they cannot explain the existence of order.

The development of order requires an organizational element.

To do useful work, or to counter the effects of entropy, energy needs to be directed or guided.

Raw energy alone actually tends to increase the effects of entropy, it doesn't increase order.

The organizational principle in living systems is provided by the informational element encoded in DNA.

Atheists have yet to explain how that first, genetic information arose of its own volition in the so-called Primordial Soup?

 

Natural laws pertinent to all natural entities, they guide the behaviour of energy and matter, but also serve to limit it, because natural laws are based only on the inherent properties of matter and energy.

So ... natural laws describe inherent properties of matter/energy, and natural processes operate only within the confines of natural laws which are based on their own properties. They can never exceed the parameters of those laws.

 

The much acclaimed, Dawkinsian principle that randomness can develop into order by means of a sieving process, such as shaken pebbles being sorted by falling through a hole of a particular size is erroneous, because it completely ignores the regulatory influence of natural laws on the outcome, which are not at all random.

If we can predict the outcome in advance, as we can with Dawkins' example, it cannot be called random. We CAN predict the outcome because we know that the pebbles will behave according to the regulatory influence of natural laws, such as the law of gravity. If there was no law of gravity, then Dawkins' pebbles, when shaken, would not fall through the hole, they would not be sorted, they would act completely unpredictably, possibly floating about in the air in all directions. In that case, the randomness would not result in any order. That is true randomness.

Dawkins' randomness, allegedly developing into order, is not random at all, the outcome is predictable and controlled by natural laws and the inherent properties of matter. He is starting with 2 organizational principles, natural laws and the inherent, ordered structure and properties of matter, and he calls that randomness!

Bogus science indeed!

This tells us that order is already there at the beginning of the universe, in the form of natural laws and the ordered composition and structure of matter .... it doesn't just develop from random events.

 

A major problem for atheists is to explain where natural laws came from?

In a purposeless universe there should be no regulatory principles at all.

Firstly, we would not expect anything to exist, we would expect eternal nothingness.

Secondly, even if we overlook that impossible hurdle, and assume by some amazing fluke and contrary to logic, something was able to create itself from nothing ….. we would expect the ‘something’ would have no ordered structure, and no laws based on that ordered structure. We would expect it to behave randomly and chaotically.

This is an absolutely fundamental question to which atheists have no answer. The basic properties of matter/energy, and the universe, scream …. ‘purpose’.

Atheists say the exact opposite.

Furthermore, if we consider the accepted, atheist belief; that matter is inherently predisposed to produce life and the genetic information for life, whenever environmental conditions are conducive (so-called abiogenesis), where does that predisposition for life come from? Once again, atheists are hoisted on their own petard, and the atheist idea of a random, purposeless, universe is left completely in tatters.

 

It is the atheist ideology that is anti-science, not necessarily individual scientists.

There may be sincere, atheist scientists who respect the scientific method and natural laws, but they are wedded to an ideology that - when push comes to shove, does not respect natural laws.

It is evident that whenever natural laws interfere with atheist naturalist beliefs, the beliefs take precedence over the rigorous, scientific method. It is then that natural laws are disregarded by atheists in favour of unscientific fantasies which are conducive to their ideology.

Of course, in much day-to-day practical science and technology, the question of violating laws doesn't even arise, and we cannot deny that in the course of such work, atheists will respect the scientific method of experiment and observation within the framework of the Law of Cause and Effect and other established laws of science.

Bizarrely, It is a different matter entirely, when it comes to hypotheses about origins. It then becomes an 'anything goes' situation. The main criteria then seems to be that it doesn’t matter whether your hypothesis violates natural laws (all sorts of excuses can be made as to why natural laws need not apply), all that matters is that it is entirely naturalistic, and can be made to sound plausible to the public.

However, the same atheist scientists would not entertain anything in general, day-to-day science, that is not completely in accordance with the scientific method, they make an exception ONLY with anything to do with origins, whether it be the origin of the universe, or the origin of life, or the origin of species.

 

Atheism is not simply passive non-belief, you can only be a ‘genuine’ atheist if you proactively believe in the following illogical and unscientific propositions:

 

1. A natural, first cause of the universe that was ‘uncaused’.

 

2. A natural, first cause of the universe that was patently not adequate for the effect, (a cause which was able to produce an effect far greater than itself and superior to its own abilities).

 

3. That the universe created ITSELF from nothing.

 

4. That natural laws simply arose of their own accord, without any reason, purpose or cause.

 

5. That energy potential at the start of everything material was able to wind itself up from absolute zero, of its own accord, without any reason, purpose or cause.

 

6. That the effect of entropy (Second Law of Thermodynamics) was somehow suspended or didn’t operate to permit the development of order in the universe.

 

7. That life spontaneously generated itself, of its own volition, from sterile matter, contrary to: the Law of Biogenesis, the laws of probability, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Information Theory and common sense.

 

8. That the complete human genome was created by means of a long chain of copying mistakes of the original, genetic information in the first living cell, (mutations of mutations of mutations, etc. etc.).

 

9. That the complex DNA code was produced by chemical processes.

 

10. That the very first, genetic information, encoded in the DNA of the first living cell, created itself by some unknown means.

 

11. That matter is somehow inherently predisposed to develop into living cells, whenever conditions are conducive to life. But such a predisposition for life just arose of its own accord, with no purpose and with no apparent cause.

 

12. That an ordered structure of atoms, guiding laws of physics, order in the cosmos, order in the living cell and complex information, are what we would expect to occur naturally in a purposeless universe.

 

The claim of atheists to be the champions of science and reason is clearly bogus.

They think they can get away with it by pretending to have no beliefs.

However, when seriously challenged to justify their dogmatic rejection of a Supernatural First Cause, they indirectly espouse the unscientific beliefs outlined above, in their futile attempts to refute the evidence for a supernatural first cause.

Of course, whenever possible, they avoid declaring those beliefs explicitly, but you don’t need to be very astute to realize that relying on those beliefs is the unavoidable conclusion of their arguments.

 

That is why atheism is intellectually bankrupt and is doomed to the dustbin of history. And that is why we are seeing such a rise in militant, evangelizing, atheist zealots, such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.

Their crusading, bravado masks their desperation that the public is so hard to convince. What Dawkins et al need to face is that they are in no position to attack what they consider are the bizarre beliefs of others, when their own beliefs (which they fail to publicly acknowledge) are much more bizarre.

 

What about Christianity and pagan gods?

 

Atheists frequently try to dismiss and ridicule the idea of a Creator by comparing it to the numerous, pagan gods that people have worshipped throughout history.

 

Do they have a good point?

 

Certainly not, this is just a red herring ….

Other gods, cannot be the first cause or Creator.

Idols of wood or stone, or the Sun, Moon, planets, Mother Nature, Mother Earth etc. are all material, contingent things, they cannot be the first cause.

They are rejected as false gods by the Bible and by logic and natural laws.

They are considered gods by people who worship things which are 'created' rather than the Creator, which the Bible condemns.

In fact, they are much more similar to the atheist belief in the powers of a naturalistic entity to create the universe, than they are to the one, Creator God of Christianity.

For example, the pagan belief in the creative powers of Ra (the Sun god) is similar to the atheist belief that raw energy from the Sun acting on sterile chemicals was able to create life.

 

So atheist mythology credits the Sun (Ra) with the godlike power of creating life on Earth. And thus, atheism is just a revamped version of paganism.

Just like paganism, atheism rejects worship of a Supernatural, First Cause, and rather chooses to worship created, natural entities, imbuing them with the same godlike powers, that theists attribute to the Creator.

There is nothing new under the Sun ... We can see that atheism is just the age old deception of ancient paganism, revisited.

 

The Creator is a Supernatural, First Cause, which is not a contingent entity, nothing like the pagan gods, but rather a self-existent, necessary entity. As the very first cause of everything in the universe, it cannot be contingent (it cannot rely on anything outside itself for its existence, i.e. it is self-existent) and therefore it cannot be a material entity.

The first cause is necessary because, not being contingent, it necessarily exists.

If anything exists that is not contingent, it has to have within itself everything necessary for its own existence. If it is also responsible for the existence of anything outside itself (which as the first cause of the universe, we know it is) it is also necessary for the existence of those things, and has to be entirely adequate for the purpose of bringing them into being and maintaining their continued existence. It is not subject to natural laws, which only apply to natural events and effects, because, as the first cause, it is the initiator and creator of everything material, including the laws which govern material events, and of time itself.

 

The atheist view of a natural first cause is not even rational, to propose that all the qualities I have mentioned above could apply to a material entity is clearly ridiculous. But apparently, atheism has no regard for natural laws or logic. Atheists get round it by simply dressing up their irrational beliefs to make them appear ‘scientific’.

This combined with rants and erroneous and derisory slogans about religious myths and superstition makes it all seem perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, those with little knowledge, or who can’t be bothered to think for themselves are taken in by it.

 

Atheists repeatedly claim that they have refuted the law of cause and effect by asking : So what caused God then?

How true is that?

 

The ... what caused God? argument is a rather silly argument which atheists regularly trot out. All it demonstrates is that they don't understand basic logic.

 

The question to always ask them is; what part of FIRST don't you understand?

If something is the very FIRST, it means there is nothing that precedes it. First means first, not second or third.

That means that the first cause cannot be a contingent entity, because a contingent entity depends on something preceding it for its existence. In which case, if something precedes it, it couldn't be FIRST.

All natural entities, events and effects are contingent ... that is why the Law of Cause and Effect states that ... every NATURAL effect requires an adequate cause.

That means that the first cause cannot be a natural entity. An UNCAUSED, NATURAL event or entity is ruled out as not possible by the Law of Cause and Effect.

Therefore the very FIRST CAUSE of the universe, which we know cannot be caused, by virtue of it being FIRST (not second or third) CANNOT be a natural entity or event.

Thus we deduce that the first cause ... cannot be contingent, cannot be a natural entity, and cannot be subject to the Law of Cause and Effect.

So the first cause has to be non-material, i.e. supernatural.

The first cause also has to have the creative potential to create every other cause and effect that follows it.

In other words, the first cause cannot be inferior in any respect to the properties, powers or qualities of anything that exists...

The effect cannot be greater than the cause....

So we can thus deduce that the first cause is: UNCAUSED, SUPERNATURAL, self-existent, and capable of creating everything we see in the existing universe.

If there is life in the universe, the first cause must have the ability to create life,

If there is intelligence in the universe, the first cause must have the ability to create intelligence.

If there is information in the universe, the first cause must have the ability to create information.

If there is consciousness in the universe, the first cause must have the ability to create consciousness. And so on and on. If it exists, the first cause is responsible for it, and must have the ability to create it.

That is the Creator God … and His existence is supported by impeccable logic and adherence to the demands of natural law.

Atheists often say: you can’t fill gaps in knowledge with a supernatural first cause.

 

But we are not talking about filling gaps, we are talking about a fundamental issue ... the origin of everything in the material realm.

The first cause is not a gap, it is the beginning - and many of the greatest scientists in the history of science had no problem whatsoever with the logic that - a natural, first cause was impossible, and the only possible option was a supernatural creator.

Why do atheists have such a problem with it?

 

Atheists also seem to think that to explain the origin of the universe without a God, simply involves explaining what triggered it, as though its formation from that point on, just happens automatically.

This has been compared by some as similar to lighting the blue touch paper of a firework. They think that if they can propose such a naturalistic trigger, then God is made redundant.

That may sound plausible to some members of the public, who take such pronouncements at face value, and are somewhat in awe of anything that is claimed to be 'scientific'.

But it is obvious to anyone who thinks seriously about it, that a mere trigger is not necessarily an adequate cause.

A trigger presupposes that there is some sort of a mechanism/blueprint/plan already existing which is ready to spring into action if it is provided with an appropriate trigger. So a trigger is not a sole cause, or a first cause, it is merely one contributing cause.

Natural things do only what they are programmed to do, i.e. they obey natural laws and the demands of their own pre-ordered composition and structure. Lighting blue touch paper would do absolutely nothing, unless there is a carefully designed and manufactured firework already attached to it.

What about the idea proposed by some atheists that space must have always existed, and therefore the first cause was not the only eternally, uncaused self-existent power?

This implies that the first cause was limited by a self-existent rival (space,) which was also uncaused, and therefore the first cause could not be infinite and could not even be a proper first cause, because there was something it didn’t cause i.e. ‘space’.

There seems to be some confusion here about what ‘space’ actually is.

Space is part of the created universe, it is what lies between and around material objects in the cosmos, if there were no material objects in the cosmos, there would be no space. The confusion lies in the failure to distinguish between empty space and nothing. Nothing is the absence of everything, whereas space is a medium in which cosmic bodies exist. ‘Empty’ space is just the space between objects. So space is not an uncaused, eternally self-existent entity, it is dependent on material objects existing within it, for its own existence.

What about nothing? Is that an uncaused eternally self-existent thing? Firstly, it is not a thing, it is the absence of all things. So has nothing always existed? Well, yes it essentially would have always existed, but only if the first cause didn’t exist. If there is a first cause is that is eternally self-existent, then there is no such thing as absolute nothing, because nothing is the absence of everything. If a first cause exists (which it had to), then any proposed eternal ‘nothing’ has always contained something, and therefore can never have been ‘nothing’.

 

What about the idea that the first cause created everything material from nothing? Obviously, the ‘nothing’ that is meant here is … nothing material, i.e. the absence of any material entities.

The uncaused, first cause cannot be material, because all material things are contingent, so the first cause brought material things into being, when nothing material had previously existed. That is what is meant by creation from nothing.

Continued in next comment.

Special paint scheme celebrating 35 years since the founding of the Tornado Trinational Training Establishment (TTTE). Royal International Air Tattoo 2015.

 

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Establishment. Image two hundred and seventy-four of my project 365. This was once Cleven’s Grocery but now goes by the name Paddle Inn.

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj]; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.

 

Vysotsky was born in Moscow at the 3rd Meshchanskaya St. (61/2) maternity hospital. His father, Semyon Volfovich (Vladimirovich) (1915–1997), was a colonel in the Soviet army, originally from Kiev. Vladimir's mother, Nina Maksimovna, (née Seryogina, 1912–2003) was Russian, and worked as a German language translator.[3] Vysotsky's family lived in a Moscow communal flat in harsh conditions, and had serious financial difficulties. When Vladimir was 10 months old, Nina had to return to her office in the Transcript bureau of the Soviet Ministry of Geodesy and Cartography (engaged in making German maps available for the Soviet military) so as to help her husband earn their family's living.

 

Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn, a theater fan. The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," often using in his public speeches expressions he could hardly have heard at home. Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New-year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You silly tossers! Give a child some respite!" His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him. A three-year-old could jeer his father in a bathroom with unexpected poetic improvisation ("Now look what's here before us / Our goat's to shave himself!") or appall unwanted guests with some street folk song, promptly steering them away. Vysotsky remembered those first three years of his life in the autobiographical Ballad of Childhood (Баллада о детстве, 1975), one of his best-known songs.

 

As World War II broke out, Semyon Vysotsky, a military reserve officer, joined the Soviet army and went to fight the Nazis. Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka, in Orenburg Oblast where the boy had to spend six days a week in a kindergarten and his mother worked for twelve hours a day in a chemical factory. In 1943, both returned to their Moscow apartment at 1st Meschanskaya St., 126. In September 1945, Vladimir joined the 1st class of the 273rd Moscow Rostokino region School.

 

In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced. From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "aunt Zhenya", at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany (later East Germany). "We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered. Here living conditions, compared to those of Nina's communal Moscow flat, were infinitely better; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-storeyed house, and the boy had a room to himself for the first time in his life. In 1949 along with his stepmother Vladimir returned to Moscow. There he joined the 5th class of the Moscow 128th School and settled at Bolshoy Karetny [ru], 15 (where they had to themselves two rooms of a four-roomed flat), with "auntie Zhenya" (who was just 28 at the time), a woman of great kindness and warmth whom he later remembered as his second mother. In 1953 Vysotsky, now much interested in theater and cinema, joined the Drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.[7] "No one in my family has had anything to do with arts, no actors or directors were there among them. But my mother admired theater and from the earliest age... each and every Saturday I've been taken up with her to watch one play or the other. And all of this, it probably stayed with me," he later reminisced. The same year he received his first ever guitar, a birthday present from Nina Maksimovna; a close friend, bard and a future well-known Soviet pop lyricist Igor Kokhanovsky taught him basic chords. In 1955 Vladimir re-settled into his mother's new home at 1st Meshchanskaya, 76. In June of the same year he graduated from school with five A's.

 

In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-Institute. It was there that he met the 3rd course student Iza Zhukova who four years later became his wife; soon the two lovers settled at the 1st Meschanskaya flat, in a common room, shielded off by a folding screen. It was also in the Studio that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava for the first time, an already popular underground bard. He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher Andrey Sinyavsky who along with his wife often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts. In 1958 Vysotsky's got his first Moscow Art Theatre role: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of student Petya in Vasily Ordynsky's The Yearlings (Сверстницы). On 20 June 1960, Vysotsky graduated from the MAT theater institute and joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre (led by Boris Ravenskikh at the time) where he spent (with intervals) almost three troubled years. These were marred by numerous administrative sanctions, due to "lack of discipline" and occasional drunken sprees which were a reaction, mainly, to the lack of serious roles and his inability to realise his artistic potential. A short stint in 1962 at the Moscow Theater of Miniatures (administered at the time by Vladimir Polyakov) ended with him being fired, officially "for a total lack of sense of humour."

 

Vysotsky's second and third films, Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, were interesting only for the fact that in both he had to be beaten up (in the first case by Aleksandr Demyanenko). "That was the way cinema greeted me," he later jokingly remarked. In 1961, Vysotsky wrote his first ever proper song, called "Tattoo" (Татуировка), which started a long and colourful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments. In June 1963, while shooting Penalty Kick (directed by Veniamin Dorman and starring Mikhail Pugovkin), Vysotsky used the Gorky Film Studio to record an hour-long reel-to-reel cassette of his own songs; copies of it quickly spread and the author's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere (although many of these songs were often being referred to as either "traditional" or "anonymous"). Just several months later Riga-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny" (Большой Каретный) and Anna Akhmatova (in a conversation with Joseph Brodsky) was quoting Vysotsky's number "I was the soul of a bad company..." taking it apparently for some brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore. In October 1964 Vysotsky recorded in chronological order 48 of his own songs, his first self-made Complete works of... compilation, which boosted his popularity as a new Moscow folk underground star.

 

In 1964, director Yuri Lyubimov invited Vysotsky to join the newly created Taganka Theatre. "'I've written some songs of my own. Won't you listen?' – he asked. I agreed to listen to just one of them, expecting our meeting to last for no more than five minutes. Instead I ended up listening to him for an entire 1.5 hours," Lyubimov remembered years later of this first audition. On 19 September 1964, Vysotsky debuted in Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan as the Second God (not to count two minor roles). A month later he came on stage as a dragoon captain (Bela's father) in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It was in Taganka that Vysotsky started to sing on stage; the War theme becoming prominent in his musical repertoire. In 1965 Vysotsky appeared in the experimental Poet and Theater (Поэт и Театр, February) show, based on Andrey Voznesensky's work and then Ten Days that Shook the World (after John Reed's book, April) and was commissioned by Lyubimov to write songs exclusively for Taganka's new World War II play. The Fallen and the Living (Павшие и Живые), premiered in October 1965, featured Vysotsky's "Stars" (Звёзды), "The Soldiers of Heeresgruppe Mitte" (Солдаты группы "Центр") and "Penal Battalions" (Штрафные батальоны), the striking examples of a completely new kind of a war song, never heard in his country before. As veteran screenwriter Nikolay Erdman put it (in conversation with Lyubimov), "Professionally, I can well understand how Mayakovsky or Seryozha Yesenin were doing it. How Volodya Vysotsky does it is totally beyond me." With his songs – in effect, miniature theatrical dramatizations (usually with a protagonist and full of dialogues), Vysotsky instantly achieved such level of credibility that real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, footballers refused to believe that the author himself had never served his time in prisons and labor camps, or fought in the War, or been a boxing/football professional. After the second of the two concerts at the Leningrad Molecular Physics institute (that was his actual debut as a solo musical performer) Vysotsky left a note for his fans in a journal which ended with words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all. With love, Vysotsky, 20 April 1965, XX c." Excuses of this kind he had to make throughout his performing career. At least one of Vysotsky's song themes – that of alcoholic abuse – was worryingly autobiographical, though. By the time his breakthrough came in 1967, he'd suffered several physical breakdowns and once was sent (by Taganka's boss) to a rehabilitation clinic, a visit he on several occasions repeated since.

 

Brecht's Life of Galileo (premiered on 17 May 1966), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role (along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage). Press reaction was mixed, some reviewers disliked the actor's overt emotionalism, but it was for the first time ever that Vysotsky's name appeared in Soviet papers. Film directors now were treating him with respect. Viktor Turov's war film I Come from the Childhood where Vysotsky got his first ever "serious" (neither comical, nor villainous) role in cinema, featured two of his songs: a spontaneous piece called "When It's Cold" (Холода) and a dark, Unknown soldier theme-inspired classic "Common Graves" (На братских могилах), sung behind the screen by the legendary Mark Bernes.

 

Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov's The Vertical (1967), a mountain climbing drama, starring Vysotsky (as Volodya the radioman), brought him all-round recognition and fame. Four of the numbers used in the film (including "Song of a Friend [fi]" (Песня о друге), released in 1968 by the Soviet recording industry monopolist Melodiya disc to become an unofficial hit) were written literally on the spot, nearby Elbrus, inspired by professional climbers' tales and one curious hotel bar conversation with a German guest who 25 years ago happened to climb these very mountains in a capacity of an Edelweiss division fighter. Another 1967 film, Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters featured Vysotsky as the geologist Maxim (paste-bearded again) with a now trademark off-the-cuff musical piece, a melancholy improvisation called "Things to Do" (Дела). All the while Vysotsky continued working hard at Taganka, with another important role under his belt (that of Mayakovsky or, rather one of the latter character's five different versions) in the experimental piece called Listen! (Послушайте!), and now regularly gave semi-official concerts where audiences greeted him as a cult hero.

 

In the end of 1967 Vysotsky got another pivotal theater role, that of Khlopusha [ru] in Pugachov (a play based on a poem by Sergei Yesenin), often described as one of Taganka's finest. "He put into his performance all the things that he excelled at and, on the other hand, it was Pugachyov that made him discover his own potential," – Soviet critic Natalya Krymova wrote years later. Several weeks after the premiere, infuriated by the actor's increasing unreliability triggered by worsening drinking problems, Lyubimov fired him – only to let him back again several months later (and thus begin the humiliating sacked-then-pardoned routine which continued for years). In June 1968 a Vysotsky-slagging campaign was launched in the Soviet press. First Sovetskaya Rossiya commented on the "epidemic spread of immoral, smutty songs," allegedly promoting "criminal world values, alcoholism, vice and immorality" and condemned their author for "sowing seeds of evil." Then Komsomolskaya Pravda linked Vysotsky with black market dealers selling his tapes somewhere in Siberia. Composer Dmitry Kabalevsky speaking from the Union of Soviet Composers' Committee tribune criticised the Soviet radio for giving an ideologically dubious, "low-life product" like "Song of a Friend" (Песня о друге) an unwarranted airplay. Playwright Alexander Stein who in his Last Parade play used several of Vysotsky's songs, was chastised by a Ministry of Culture official for "providing a tribune for this anti-Soviet scum." The phraseology prompted commentators in the West to make parallels between Vysotsky and Mikhail Zoschenko, another Soviet author who'd been officially labeled "scum" some 20 years ago.

 

Two of Vysotsky's 1968 films, Gennady Poloka's Intervention (premiered in May 1987) where he was cast as Brodsky, a dodgy even if highly artistic character, and Yevgeny Karelov's Two Comrades Were Serving (a gun-toting White Army officer Brusentsov who in the course of the film shoots his friend, his horse, Oleg Yankovsky's good guy character and, finally himself) – were severely censored, first of them shelved for twenty years. At least four of Vysotsky's 1968 songs, "Save Our Souls" (Спасите наши души), "The Wolfhunt" (Охота на волков), "Gypsy Variations" (Моя цыганская) and "The Steam-bath in White" (Банька по-белому), were hailed later as masterpieces. It was at this point that 'proper' love songs started to appear in Vysotsky's repertoire, documenting the beginning of his passionate love affair with French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 1969 Vysotsky starred in two films: The Master of Taiga where he played a villainous Siberian timber-floating brigadier, and more entertaining Dangerous Tour. The latter was criticized in the Soviet press for taking a farcical approach to the subject of the Bolshevik underground activities but for a wider Soviet audience this was an important opportunity to enjoy the charismatic actor's presence on big screen. In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vysotsky embarked on a massive and by Soviet standards dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia and then brought Marina Vlady to director Viktor Turov's place so as to investigate her Belarusian roots. The pair finally wed on 1 December 1970 (causing furore among the Moscow cultural and political elite) and spent a honeymoon in Georgia. This was the highly productive period for Vysotsky, resulting in numerous new songs, including the anthemic "I Hate" (Я не люблю), sentimental "Lyricale" (Лирическая) and dramatic war epics "He Didn't Return from the Battle" (Он не вернулся из боя) and "The Earth Song" (Песня о Земле) among many others.

 

In 1971 a drinking spree-related nervous breakdown brought Vysotsky to the Moscow Kashchenko clinic [ru]. By this time he has been suffering from alcoholism. Many of his songs from this period deal, either directly or metaphorically, with alcoholism and insanity. Partially recovered (due to the encouraging presence of Marina Vladi), Vysotsky embarked on a successful Ukrainian concert tour and wrote a cluster of new songs. On 29 November 1971 Taganka's Hamlet premiered, a groundbreaking Lyubimov's production with Vysotsky in the leading role, that of a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.

 

Also in 1971 Vysotsky was invited to play the lead in The Sannikov Land, the screen adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's science fiction,[47] which he wrote several songs for, but was suddenly dropped for the reason of his face "being too scandalously recognisable" as a state official put it. One of the songs written for the film, a doom-laden epic allegory "Capricious Horses" (Кони привередливые), became one of the singer's signature tunes. Two of Vysotsky's 1972 film roles were somewhat meditative: an anonymous American journalist in The Fourth One and the "righteous guy" von Koren in The Bad Good Man (based on Anton Chekov's Duel). The latter brought Vysotsky the Best Male Role prize at the V Taormina Film Fest. This philosophical slant rubbed off onto some of his new works of the time: "A Singer at the Microphone" (Певец у микрофона), "The Tightrope Walker" (Канатоходец), two new war songs ("We Spin the Earth", "Black Pea-Coats") and "The Grief" (Беда), a folkish girl's lament, later recorded by Marina Vladi and subsequently covered by several female performers. Popular proved to be his 1972 humorous songs: "Mishka Shifman" (Мишка Шифман), satirizing the leaving-for-Israel routine, "Victim of the Television" which ridiculed the concept of "political consciousness," and "The Honour of the Chess Crown" (Честь шахматной короны) about an ever-fearless "simple Soviet man" challenging the much feared American champion Bobby Fischer to a match.

 

In 1972 he stepped up in Soviet Estonian TV where he presented his songs and gave an interview. The name of the show was "Young Man from Taganka" (Noormees Tagankalt).

 

In April 1973 Vysotsky visited Poland and France. Predictable problems concerning the official permission were sorted after the French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the stellar couple. Having found on return a potentially dangerous lawsuit brought against him (concerning some unsanctioned concerts in Siberia the year before), Vysotsky wrote a defiant letter to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. As a result, he was granted the status of a philharmonic artist, 11.5 roubles per concert now guaranteed. Still the 900 rubles fine had to be paid according to the court verdict, which was a substantial sum, considering his monthly salary at the theater was 110 rubles. That year Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for "Alice in Wonderland," an audioplay where he himself has been given several minor roles. His best known songs of 1973 included "The Others' Track" (Чужая колея), "The Flight Interrupted" (Прерванный полёт) and "The Monument", all pondering on his achievements and legacy.

 

In 1974 Melodiya released the 7" EP, featuring four of Vysotsky's war songs ("He Never Returned From the Battle", "The New Times Song", "Common Graves", and "The Earth Song") which represented a tiny portion of his creative work, owned by millions on tape. In September of that year Vysotsky received his first state award, the Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR following a tour with fellow actors from the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan. A year later he was granted the USSR Union of Cinematographers' membership. This meant he was not an "anti-Soviet scum" now, rather an unlikely link between the official Soviet cinema elite and the "progressive-thinking artists of the West." More films followed, among them The Only Road (a Soviet-Yugoslav joint venture, premiered on 10 January 1975 in Belgrade) and a science fiction movie The Flight of Mr. McKinley (1975). Out of nine ballads that he wrote for the latter only two have made it into the soundtrack. This was the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vysotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Among the songs written at the time, were humorous "The Instruction before the Trip Abroad", lyrical "Of the Dead Pilot" and philosophical "The Strange House". In 1975 Vysotsky made his third trip to France where he rather riskily visited his former tutor (and now a celebrated dissident emigre) Andrey Sinyavsky. Artist Mikhail Shemyakin, his new Paris friend (or a "bottle-sharer", in Vladi's terms), recorded Vysotsky in his home studio. After a brief stay in England Vysotsky crossed the ocean and made his first Mexican concerts in April. Back in Moscow, there were changes at Taganka: Lyubimov went to Milan's La Scala on a contract and Anatoly Efros has been brought in, a director of radically different approach. His project, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, caused a sensation. Critics praised Alla Demidova (as Ranevskaya) and Vysotsky (as Lopakhin) powerful interplay, some describing it as one of the most dazzling in the history of the Soviet theater. Lyubimov, who disliked the piece, accused Efros of giving his actors "the stardom malaise." The 1976 Taganka's visit to Bulgaria resulted in Vysotskys's interview there being filmed and 15 songs recorded by Balkanton record label. On return Lyubimov made a move which many thought outrageous: declaring himself "unable to work with this Mr. Vysotsky anymore" he gave the role of Hamlet to Valery Zolotukhin, the latter's best friend. That was the time, reportedly, when stressed out Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.

 

Another Belorussian voyage completed, Marina and Vladimir went for France and from there (without any official permission given, or asked for) flew to the North America. In New York Vysotsky met, among other people, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky. In a televised one-hour interview with Dan Rather he stressed he was "not a dissident, just an artist, who's never had any intentions to leave his country where people loved him and his songs." At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided as regards the "Vysotsky controversy" up to the highest level; while Mikhail Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, asked him to perform live in his daughter Galina's home, listening to this concert on the telephone. In 1976 appeared "The Domes", "The Rope" and the "Medieval" cycle, including "The Ballad of Love".

 

In September Vysotsky with Taganka made a trip to Yugoslavia where Hamlet won the annual BITEF festival's first prize, and then to Hungary for a two-week concert tour. Back in Moscow Lyubimov's production of The Master & Margarita featured Vysotsky as Ivan Bezdomny; a modest role, somewhat recompensed by an important Svidrigailov slot in Yury Karyakin's take on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Vysotsky's new songs of this period include "The History of Illness" cycle concerning his health problems, humorous "Why Did the Savages Eat Captain Cook", the metaphorical "Ballad of the Truth and the Lie", as well as "Two Fates", the chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches, his two-faced destiny. In 1977 Vysotsky's health deteriorated (heart, kidneys, liver failures, jaw infection and nervous breakdown) to such an extent that in April he found himself in Moscow clinic's reanimation center in the state of physical and mental collapse.

 

In 1977 Vysotsky made an unlikely appearance in New York City on the American television show 60 Minutes, which falsely stated that Vysotsky had spent time in the Soviet prison system, the Gulag. That year saw the release of three Vysotsky's LPs in France (including the one that had been recorded by RCA in Canada the previous year); arranged and accompanied by guitarist Kostya Kazansky, the singer for the first time ever enjoyed the relatively sophisticated musical background. In August he performed in Hollywood before members of New York City film cast and (according to Vladi) was greeted warmly by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Some more concerts in Los Angeles were followed by the appearance at the French Communist paper L’Humanité annual event. In December Taganka left for France, its Hamlet (Vysotsky back in the lead) gaining fine reviews.

 

1978 started with the March–April series of concerts in Moscow and Ukraine. In May Vysotsky embarked upon a new major film project: The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Место встречи изменить нельзя) about two detectives fighting crime in late 1940s Russia, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. The film (premiered on 11 November 1978 on the Soviet Central TV) presented Vysotsky as Zheglov, a ruthless and charismatic cop teaching his milder partner Sharapov (actor Vladimir Konkin) his art of crime-solving. Vysotsky also became engaged in Taganka's Genre-seeking show (performing some of his own songs) and played Aleksander Blok in Anatoly Efros' The Lady Stranger (Незнакомка) radio play (premiered on air on 10 July 1979 and later released as a double LP).

 

In November 1978 Vysotsky took part in the underground censorship-defying literary project Metropolis, inspired and organized by Vasily Aksenov. In January 1979 Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts. That was the point (according to biographer Vladimir Novikov) when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities. What followed though, was a return to the self-destructive theater and concert tours schedule, personal doctor Anatoly Fedotov now not only his companion, but part of Taganka's crew. "Who was this Anatoly? Just a man who in every possible situation would try to provide drugs. And he did provide. In such moments Volodya trusted him totally," Oksana Afanasyeva, Vysotsky's Moscow girlfriend (who was near him for most of the last year of his life and, on occasion, herself served as a drug courier) remembered. In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov (who injected caffeine into the heart directly), colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage. In January 1980 Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave. "Up to you, but on condition that Hamlet is yours," was the answer. The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry. Still, of nearly 800 poems by Vysotsky only one has been published in the Soviet Union while he was alive. Not a single performance or interview was broadcast by the Soviet television in his lifetime.

 

In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter. While recording, Vysotsky made a few attempts to speak English, trying to overcome the language barrier. This video letter never reached Beatty. It was broadcast for the first time more than three decades later, on the night of 24 January 2013 (local time) by Rossiya 1 channel, along with records of TV channels of Italy, Mexico, Poland, USA and from private collections, in Vladimir Vysotsky. A letter to Warren Beatty film by Alexander Kovanovsky and Igor Rakhmanov. While recording this video, Vysotsky had a rare opportunity to perform for a camera, being still unable to do it with Soviet television.

 

On 22 January 1980, Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television. What proved to be an exhausting affair (his concentration lacking, he had to plod through several takes for each song) was premiered on the Soviet TV eight years later. The last six months of his life saw Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol. His performances were often erratic. Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic. Yet he kept writing, mostly poetry and even prose, but songs as well. The last song he performed was the agonizing "My Sorrow, My Anguish" and his final poem, written one week prior to his death was "A Letter to Marina": "I'm less than fifty, but the time is short / By you and God protected, life and limb / I have a song or two to sing before the Lord / I have a way to make my peace with him."

 

Although several theories of the ultimate cause of the singer's death persist to this day, given what is now known about cardiovascular disease, it seems likely that by the time of his death Vysotsky had an advanced coronary condition brought about by years of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as his grueling work schedule and the stress of the constant harassment by the government. Towards the end, most of Vysotsky's closest friends had become aware of the ominous signs and were convinced that his demise was only a matter of time. Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech. Accounts by Vysotsky's close friends and colleagues concerning his last hours were compiled in the book by V. Perevozchikov.

 

Vysotsky suffered from alcoholism for most of his life. Sometime around 1977, he started using amphetamines and other prescription narcotics in an attempt to counteract the debilitating hangovers and eventually to rid himself of alcohol addiction. While these attempts were partially successful, he ended up trading alcoholism for a severe drug dependency that was fast spiralling out of control. He was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection. On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.

 

Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction. He underwent an experimental (and ultimately discredited) blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow. He also went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs. After these attempts failed, Vysotsky returned to Moscow to find his life in an increasingly stressful state of disarray. He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty). He also unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton. Relations with his wife Marina were deteriorating, and he was torn between his loyalty to her and his love for his mistress Oksana Afanasyeva. He had also developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.

 

In a final desperate attempt to overcome his drug addiction, partially prompted by his inability to obtain drugs through his usual channels (the authorities had imposed a strict monitoring of the medical institutions to prevent illicit drug distribution during the 1980 Olympics), he relapsed into alcohol and went on a prolonged drinking binge (apparently consuming copious amounts of champagne due to a prevalent misconception at the time that it was better than vodka at countering the effects of drug withdrawal).

 

On 3 July 1980, Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall. One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts. On 16 July Vysotsky gave his last public concert in Kaliningrad. On 18 July, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time at the Taganka Theatre. From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink. The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy. At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved. On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up. But soon thereafter, Oksana Afanasyeva saw him clench his chest several times, which led her to suspect that he was genuinely suffering from a cardiovascular condition. She informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night. In the evening, after drinking relatively small amounts of alcohol, the moaning and groaning Vysotsky was sedated by Fedotov, who then sat down on the couch next to him but fell asleep. Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified. This was contradicted by Fedotov's colleagues, Sklifosovsky Emergency Medical Institute physicians L. Sul'povar and S. Scherbakov (who had demanded the actor's immediate hospitalization on 23 July but were allegedly rebuffed by Fedotov), who insisted that Fedotov's incompetent sedation combined with alcohol was what killed Vysotsky. An autopsy was prevented by Vysotsky's parents (who were eager to have their son's drug addiction remain secret), so the true cause of death remains unknown.

 

No official announcement of the actor's death was made, only a brief obituary appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, and a note informing of Vysotsky's death and cancellation of the Hamlet performance was put out at the entrance to the Taganka Theatre (the story goes that not a single ticket holder took advantage of the refund offer). Despite this, by the end of the day, millions had learned of Vysotsky's death. On 28 July, he lay in state at the Taganka Theatre. After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.

 

According to author Valery Perevozchikov part of the blame for his death lay with the group of associates who surrounded him in the last years of his life. This inner circle were all people under the influence of his strong character, combined with a material interest in the large sums of money his concerts earned. This list included Valerii Yankelovich, manager of the Taganka Theatre and prime organiser of his non-sanctioned concerts; Anatoly Fedotov, his personal doctor; Vadim Tumanov, gold prospector (and personal friend) from Siberia; Oksana Afanasyeva (later Yarmolnik), his mistress the last three years of his life; Ivan Bortnik, a fellow actor; and Leonid Sul'povar, a department head at the Sklifosovski hospital who was responsible for much of the supply of drugs.

 

Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life. Under their influence, he was able to continue to perform all over the country, up to a week before his death. Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary. The payouts and gathering of money were a constant source of danger, and Yankelovich and others were needed to organise them.

 

Some money went to Vysotsky, the rest was distributed amongst this circle. At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vysotsky going became unmanageable. This culminated at the time of the Moscow Olympics which coincided with the last days of his life, when supplies of drugs were monitored more strictly than usual, and some of the doctors involved in supplying Vysotsky were already behind bars (normally the doctors had to account for every ampule, thus drugs were transferred to an empty container, while the patients received a substitute or placebo instead). In the last few days Vysotsky became uncontrollable, his shouting could be heard all over the apartment building on Malaya Gruzinskaya St. where he lived amongst VIP's. Several days before his death, in a state of stupor he went on a high speed drive around Moscow in an attempt to obtain drugs and alcohol – when many high-ranking people saw him. This increased the likelihood of him being forcibly admitted to the hospital, and the consequent danger to the circle supplying his habit. As his state of health declined, and it became obvious that he might die, his associates gathered to decide what to do with him. They came up with no firm decision. They did not want him admitted officially, as his drug addiction would become public and they would fall under suspicion, although some of them admitted that any ordinary person in his condition would have been admitted immediately.

 

On Vysotsky's death his associates and relatives put in much effort to prevent a post-mortem being carried out. This despite the fairly unusual circumstances: he died aged 42 under heavy sedation with an improvised cocktail of sedatives and stimulants, including the toxic chloral hydrate, provided by his personal doctor who had been supplying him with narcotics the previous three years. This doctor, being the only one present at his side when death occurred, had a few days earlier been seen to display elementary negligence in treating the sedated Vysotsky. On the night of his death, Arkadii Vysotsky (his son), who tried to visit his father in his apartment, was rudely refused entry by Yankelovich, even though there was a lack of people able to care for him. Subsequently, the Soviet police commenced a manslaughter investigation which was dropped due to the absence of evidence taken at the time of death.

 

Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. They met in 1956, being both MAT theater institute students, lived for some time at Vysotsky's mother's flat in Moscow, after her graduation (Iza was 2 years older) spent months in different cities (her – in Kiev, then Rostov) and finally married on 25 April 1960.

 

He met his second wife Lyudmila Abramova in 1961, while shooting the film 713 Requests Permission to Land. They married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady (born 1962) and Nikita (born 1964).

 

While still married to Lyudmila Abramova, Vysotsky began a romantic relationship with Tatyana Ivanenko, a Taganka actress, then, in 1967 fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had three children, while Vladimir had two. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.

 

In the autumn of 1981 Vysotsky's first collection of poetry was officially published in the USSR, called The Nerve (Нерв). Its first edition (25,000 copies) was sold out instantly. In 1982 the second one followed (100,000), then the 3rd (1988, 200,000), followed in the 1990s by several more. The material for it was compiled by Robert Rozhdestvensky, an officially laurelled Soviet poet. Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.

 

In 1982 the motion picture The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe was produced in the Soviet Union and in 1983 the movie was released to the public. Four songs by Vysotsky were featured in the film.

 

In 1986 the official Vysotsky poetic heritage committee was formed (with Robert Rozhdestvensky at the helm, theater critic Natalya Krymova being both the instigator and the organizer). Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize. The official formula – "for creating the character of Zheglov and artistic achievements as a singer-songwriter" was much derided from both the left and the right. In 1988 the Selected Works of... (edited by N. Krymova) compilation was published, preceded by I Will Surely Return... (Я, конечно, вернусь...) book of fellow actors' memoirs and Vysotsky's verses, some published for the first time. In 1990 two volumes of extensive The Works of... were published, financed by the late poet's father Semyon Vysotsky. Even more ambitious publication series, self-proclaimed "the first ever academical edition" (the latter assertion being dismissed by sceptics) compiled and edited by Sergey Zhiltsov, were published in Tula (1994–1998, 5 volumes), Germany (1994, 7 volumes) and Moscow (1997, 4 volumes).

 

In 1989 the official Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant (edited by Sergey Zaitsev) devoted entirely to Vysotsky's legacy. In 1996 it became an independent publication and was closed in 2002.

 

In the years to come, Vysotsky's grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations of his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tombstone also became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue. Although probably too solemn to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life.

 

In 1995 in Moscow the Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates. Among those present were the bard's parents, two of his sons, first wife Iza, renown poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky. "Vysotsky had always been telling the truth. Only once he was wrong when he sang in one of his songs: 'They will never erect me a monument in a square like that by Petrovskye Vorota'", Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov said in his speech.[95] A further monument to Vysotsky was erected in 2014 at Rostov-on-Don.

 

In October 2004, a monument to Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge. His son, Nikita Vysotsky, attended the unveiling. The statue was designed by Russian sculptor Alexander Taratinov, who also designed a monument to Alexander Pushkin in Podgorica. The bronze statue shows Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar. Next to the figure lies a bronze skull – a reference to Vysotsky's monumental lead performances in Shakespeare's Hamlet. On the pedestal the last lines from a poem of Vysotsky's, dedicated to Montenegro, are carved.

 

The Vysotsky business center & semi-skyscraper was officially opened in Yekaterinburg, in 2011. It is the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, has 54 floors, total height: 188.3 m (618 ft). On the third floor of the business center is the Vysotsky Museum. Behind the building is a bronze sculpture of Vladimir Vysotsky and his third wife, a French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 2011 a controversial movie Vysotsky. Thank You For Being Alive was released, script written by his son, Nikita Vysotsky. The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects. The film tells about Vysotsky's illegal underground performances, problems with KGB and drugs, and subsequent clinical death in 1979.

 

Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian bards started writing songs and poems about his life and death. The best known are Yuri Vizbor's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski based some of his songs on those of Vysotsky, such as his first song (1977) was based on "The Wolfhunt", and dedicated to his memory the song "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" ("Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky").

 

Every year on Vysotsky's birthday festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Wolf Biermann in Germany, Bob Dylan in America, or Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel in France.

 

The asteroid 2374 Vladvysotskij, discovered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva, was named after Vysotsky.

 

During the Annual Q&A Event Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, Alexey Venediktov asked Putin to name a street in Moscow after the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who, though considered one of the greatest Russian artists, has no street named after him in Moscow almost 30 years after his death. Venediktov stated a Russian law that allowed the President to do so and promote a law suggestion to name a street by decree. Putin answered that he would talk to Mayor of Moscow and would solve this problem. In July 2015 former Upper and Lower Tagansky Dead-ends (Верхний и Нижний Таганские тупики) in Moscow were reorganized into Vladimir Vysotsky Street.

 

The Sata Kieli Cultural Association, [Finland], organizes the annual International Vladimir Vysotsky Festival (Vysotski Fest), where Vysotsky's singers from different countries perform in Helsinki and other Finnish cities. They sing Vysotsky in different languages and in different arrangements.

 

Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

 

Throughout his lengthy musical career, Jaromír Nohavica, a famed Czech singer, translated and performed numerous songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, most notably Песня о друге (Píseň o příteli – Song about a friend).

 

The Museum of Vladimir Vysotsky in Koszalin dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky was founded by Marlena Zimna (1969–2016) in May 1994, in her apartment, in the city of Koszalin, in Poland. Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. A special place in the collection holds a Vladimir Vysotsky's guitar, on which he played at a concert in Casablanca in April 1976. Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph (an extract from Vladimir Vysotsky's song "What Happened in Africa"), written in Russian right on the guitar.

 

In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture. Author Vladimir Chebotarev.

 

After her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret, Marina Vlady wrote a book called The Aborted Flight about her years together with Vysotsky. The book paid tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet was uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused in their marriage. Written in French (and published in France in 1987), it was translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator and came out in 1989 in the USSR. Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship (or rather, the lack of any), implying that Vysotsky-senior (while his son was alive) was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB. Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love. Among other publications of note were Valery Zolotukhin's Vysotsky's Secret (2000), a series of Valery Perevozchikov's books (His Dying Hour, The Unknown Vysotsky and others) containing detailed accounts and interviews dealing with the bard's life's major controversies (the mystery surrounding his death, the truth behind Vysotsky Sr.'s alleged KGB reports, the true nature of Vladimir Vysotsky's relations with his mother Nina's second husband Georgy Bartosh etc.), Iza Zhukova's Short Happiness for a Lifetime and the late bard's sister-in-law Irena Vysotskaya's My Brother Vysotsky. The Beginnings (both 2005).

 

A group of enthusiasts has created a non-profit project – the mobile application "Vysotsky"

 

The multifaceted talent of Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" (бард) that Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and poet rather than a singer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." With the advent of portable tape-recorders in the Soviet Union, Vysotsky's music became available to the masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings (later on cassette tapes).

 

Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition. He was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France, he has been compared with Georges Brassens; in Russia, however, he was more frequently compared with Joe Dassin, partly because they were the same age and died in the same year, although their ideologies, biographies, and musical styles are very different. Vysotsky's lyrics and style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski, a Polish songwriter and singer who touched on similar themes.

 

The songs – over 600 of them – were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were blatnaya pesnya ("outlaw songs"). These songs were based either on the life of the common people in Moscow or on life in the crime people, sometimes in Gulag. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These war songs were not written to glorify war, but rather to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life-threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs.

 

Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, although he is almost never the narrator. When singing his criminal songs, he would adopt the accent and intonation of a Moscow thief, and when singing war songs, he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. In many of his philosophical songs, he adopted the role of inanimate objects. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet played his role so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was, indeed, a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that "War veterans thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them." The same could be said about mountain climbers; on multiple occasions, Vysotsky was sent pictures of mountain climbers' graves with quotes from his lyrics etched on the tombstones.

 

Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed wherever and whenever he could – in the theater (where he worked), at universities, in private apartments, village clubs, and in the open air. It was not unusual for him to give several concerts in one day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. With few exceptions, he wasn't allowed to publish his recordings with "Melodiya", which held a monopoly on the Soviet music industry. His songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity. Cosmonauts even took his music on cassette into orbit.

 

Musically, virtually all of Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords. Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning. This guitar, with its specific Russian tuning, makes a slight yet notable difference in chord voicings than the standard tuned six string Spanish (classical) guitar, and it became a staple of his sound. Because Vysotsky tuned down a tone and a half, his strings had less tension, which also colored the sound.

 

His earliest songs were usually written in C minor (with the guitar tuned a tone down from DGBDGBD to CFACFAC)

 

Songs written in this key include "Stars" (Zvyozdy), "My friend left for Magadan" (Moy drug uyekhal v Magadan), and most of his "outlaw songs".

 

At around 1970, Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor (guitar tuned to CFACFAC), which he continued doing until his death.

 

Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing. He used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques. One of his favorite was to play an alternating bass with his thumb as he plucked or strummed with his other fingers.

 

Often, Vysotsky would neglect to check the tuning of his guitar, which is particularly noticeable on earlier recordings. According to some accounts, Vysotsky would get upset when friends would attempt to tune his guitar, leading some to believe that he preferred to play slightly out of tune as a stylistic choice. Much of this is also attributable to the fact that a guitar that is tuned down more than 1 whole step (Vysotsky would sometimes tune as much as 2 and a half steps down) is prone to intonation problems.

 

Vysotsky had a unique singing style. He had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs. So when a syllable is sung for a prolonged period of time, he would elongate the consonant instead of the vowel in that syllable.

Modèle / Model : Renault Master III

Affectation / Assignment : Police Nationale / National Police

Fonction / Function : Véhicule Police Secours (PS) / Rescue Police Vehicle

Mise en service / Commissioning : Juin 2013 / June 2013

Équipementier / Maker : Établissement Central Logistique de la Police Nationale (ECLPN), Atelier Central Automobile (ACA) / Logistic Central Establishment of the National Police, Automobile Central Workshop

Early morning in a marked a couple of kilometers outside Lamai Beach on Koh Samui in Thailand.

Pioneer House:

 

Improved economic conditions and business confidence during the 1920s contributed to one of the CBD’s (central business district) most significant building booms. Built in 1924, Pioneer House is a surviving example of the changes wrought to the CBD as a result of this building boom.

 

Hoey, Fry Limited began commercial life as a Brisbane-based engineering supply company situated in 150 Edward Street in 1913. The firm’s establishment date is reflective of the development of the engineering profession in Brisbane. In 1874, the Queensland Post Office Directory (POD) listed only a handful of “Civil Engineers”. By 1890s, the number of engineers and the categories under which they fell had quadrupled. By 1900, there were six categories of engineers listed in the POD, occupying two pages. The categories included “milling”, “mining”, “refrigerating” and “electrical”. In the 1910 - 1911 POD, “Engineers’ Suppliers” is listed for the first time. This inclusion provides a useful context for the establishment of Hoey, Fry Ltd in 1913. The steady growth of the engineering profession reflected the broader growth and development of Brisbane in this period, especially the expansion of an electricity grid through the CBD and across into South Brisbane, the growth of secondary industry and the appearance and rise in popularity of the motorcar.

 

Hoey, Fry Ltd were clearly successful, for within a decade of its establishment, it was able to purchase the allotment adjacent to Invicta House, which was then under construction. The company planned to erect a multi-storey building in Edward Street at an approximate cost of £15,000. Construction on the building began in 1923 and was completed in 1924. Hoey, Fry Ltd was the exclusive representative of ‘Pioneer’ Belting & Mechanical Leathers, thus providing a likely explanation for the naming of the company’s building as ‘Pioneer House’.

 

The construction of the building contributed to the further development of the CBD’s principal warehouse precinct. The eastern portion of the CBD, roughly bounded by Elizabeth, Edward, Alice, and George Streets, developed as a warehouse and light industry precinct in the late nineteenth century. This section of the city was once known as Frogs Hollow because it was a low-lying, marshy area prone to flooding. In the mid to late nineteenth century the area was largely filled with small residences, boarding houses, and small businesses. From the 1880s, warehouses and small factories that were attracted to the area (as it was close to the wharf facilities located along the Town Reach of the river) progressively replaced many of these earlier buildings. This process reached its apogee in the 1920s.

 

Brisbane’s CBD also experienced a substantial building boom during the 1920s. According to the editor of the Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland, 1923 was the year that “The Building Boom” was manifestly apparent. Pioneer House, construction of which began in 1923, made an early contribution to this building boom.

 

As an important new building, Pioneer House was featured in some detail in an article that appeared in the Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland in July 1924. The article begins by describing the building’s height of five storeys and a basement. The floors and stairs were made with reinforced concrete and attention was drawn to how well lit the premises was. The building had an electric lift, which by “an ingenious device…will be able to serve the basement through the roof over the ground floor area”. Some attention was also paid also to the interior: “Handsome swing doors of silky oak and bevelled glass lead to each floor”. Pioneer House was the visible symbol of the company’s success, with even the Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland commenting that Hoey & Fry were “to be congratulated on their enterprise”.

 

The architectural firm of Atkinson & Conrad designed the building. This firm (1918 - 1937) was one of the more prominent architectural firms operating in Brisbane in this period and was responsible for a number of significant buildings in Brisbane, including the Masonic Temple in Ann Street (1930), Brisbane Boy’s College (1931), and the Courier-Mail Building in Queen Street (1937). Atkinson & Conrad also designed Invicta House, the building adjacent to Pioneer House. Walter Taylor, who is best known for construction of the Walter Taylor Bridge in Indooroopilly, constructed the building. The use of reinforced concrete in the construction of Invicta House was a hallmark of Taylor’s construction method in this period.

 

Hoey, Fry Ltd occupied the ground floor and continued to do so until at least the 1950s. The upper floors of Pioneer House were leased as offices to a variety of businesses over time. In 1986, Hoey, Fry Ltd was taken over by the major Australian company, Pacific Dunlop.

 

As with most retail premises within the CBD, Pioneer House has undergone a number of internal changes over the years to accommodate the requirements of its different commercial tenants. Alterations were carried out on the shop front in 1959 and office space in 1959 and 1979. Still, Pioneer House, along with Invicta House and the neighbouring Hotel Embassy (1928), give a distinctive, modern appearance to the Elizabeth and Edward Street intersection within the CBD.

 

The Brisbane History Group identified Pioneer House as part of Brisbane’s commercial heritage in 2002, when they included it in their publication Walking Tours – Brisbane’s Commercial Heritage 1900 - 1940. Of the nearly 90 buildings erected in the CBD during the important interwar building boom, more than half have since been demolished. Pioneer House is one of the few remaining buildings that is indicative of the changing landscape of the CBD that occurred during this period.

 

Invicta House:

 

Hooper & Harrison Ltd, woollen merchants, based in Sydney, operated from Elizabeth Street premises from 1895. The company was one of a number of woollen merchants operating in the city at this time. Initially, an agent represented the company. In 1919, however, the company opened a Queensland office and was thereafter known as Hooper & Harrison (Queensland) Ltd Woollen Merchants. By 1914, Queensland was the largest supplier of wool in Australia and Brisbane the principal centre for wool sales in the state, providing a reasonable explanation for the establishment of a Queensland office by the company in the CBD.

 

The company progressively purchased a parcel of land on the corner of Elizabeth and Edward Streets between 1919 and 1922, after which work was begun on the construction of a purpose-built warehouse building with office space. The building was completed in 1923 and was given the name of ‘Invicta House’ after the ‘Famous Invicta’ brand of clothing of which Hooper & Harrison was the sole proprietor in Brisbane.

 

The construction of the building contributed to the further development of the CBD’s principal warehouse precinct. The eastern portion of the CBD, roughly bounded by Elizabeth, Edward, Alice and George Streets, developed as a warehouse and light industry precinct in the late nineteenth century. This section of the city was once known as Frogs Hollow because it was a low-lying, marshy area prone to flooding. In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the area was largely filled with small residences, boarding houses, and small businesses. From the 1880s, warehouses and small factories that were attracted to the area (as it was close to the wharf facilities located along the Town Reach of the river) progressively replaced many of these earlier buildings. This process reached its apogee in the 1920s.

 

Brisbane’s CBD also experienced a substantial building boom during the 1920s. According to the editor of the Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland, 1923 was the year that “The Building Boom” was manifestly apparent. The article stated: “Among the architects’ offices a very fine assortment of work is to be found either actually commenced or on the board” with Invicta House being one of the examples mentioned. The construction of Invicta House was considered integral to the beginning of the CBD building boom.

 

Following the construction of Invicta House, the Architectural & Building Journal of Queensland published an article drawing particular attention to the fact that the building was fireproof, serviced by a lift and particularly well lit, even in the basement. The qualities of the interior were thus described:

 

The reinforced concrete stairs are rendered to the first floor level in Terrazzo with wrot iron palisading and maple handrails. The entrance hall has a panelled dado in Queensland maple wax…The offices and mouldings to doors are similarly treated and give a most pleasing effect.

 

In February 1924, it was reported that Invicta House was a “handsome warehouse, occupying one of our most promising business centres.” The cost of the building was given as approximately £25,000. With its modern appearance, the building made a distinctive contribution to the warehouse precinct in the eastern part of the CBD.

 

The architectural firm of Atkinson & Conrad designed the building. This firm (1918 - 1937) was one of the more prominent architectural firms operating in Brisbane in this period and was responsible for a number of significant buildings in Brisbane, including the Masonic Temple in Ann Street (1930), Brisbane Boy’s College (1931) and the Courier-Mail Building in Queen Street (1937). Atkinson & Conrad also designed Pioneer House, the building adjacent to Invicta House. Walter Taylor, who is best known for construction of the Walter Taylor Bridge in Indooroopilly, constructed the building. The use of reinforced concrete in the construction of Invicta House was a hallmark of Taylor’s construction method in this period.

 

Hooper & Harrison continued to operate from the first floor of Invicta House until at least the 1950s, while the other floors were leased by a variety of different tenants. The most prominent kind of business activity was warehousing, consonant with the building’s original design. By the 1940s, however, an accountant and the real estate agent, Ray White had offices there.

 

Ownership of the building passed to Labor Enterprises Pty Ltd, the commercial arm of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), in 1961, though they occupied the building from 1958. The then Labor-owned radio station, 4KQ, also operated from Invicta House from the late 1950s. Invicta House was, until 1972, the state ALP headquarters. Political conditions for the ALP were mixed during their period of occupancy of Invicta House. On the one hand, the federal and state branches of the Party had fallen into disarray following a split in Labor ranks in the 1950s. This split effectively stymied ALP re-election both federally and in Queensland in this period. At local government level, however, the situation was much different. A Labor administration, headed by Clem Jones, was elected in 1961. The Jones era of municipal government (1961 - 1975) in Brisbane is historically significant. According to one historian: “Clem Jones will be remembered very much for bringing Brisbane into the modern era”. As Lord Mayor of a Labor administration, this legacy reflects the broader significance of the ALP and its state headquarters in Brisbane.

 

Source: Brisbane City Council Heritage Register.

Ravenswood:

 

Ravenswood was one of several important goldfields in which formed a major component in the development of North Queensland. The need to access and exploit gold finds determined the path of railways, the establishment of related industries and commerce and the location of settlements. Some of these were short lived 'rushes', where tent and shanty townships disappeared almost as quickly as they rose. Other settlements based on goldfields became established towns with government and civic buildings, shops and family homes and survived as such. A few became important centres, only to fade away as gold yields fell. Ravenswood was one of these.

 

The area was first settled by Europeans following the establishment of Bowen in 1861. Pastoral runs were soon set up in the hinterland, including the area on which the Ravenswood field was to develop. The first gold in North Queensland had been found at Star River in 1865 and triggered further exploration. Gold was found at Merri Merriwa, the run on which the town of Ravenswood stands, in 1867, although it was reported as being on the adjoining property of Ravenswood, the name by which the field was always known.

 

Much of the gold initially found was in a triangle in and around three dry creeks which soon formed the focus for a tent and shanty settlement. Ravenswood gold was in reefs and a small battery was first set up in 1869, followed by the Lady Marian Mill in 1870. The settlement was also surveyed at this time, but by then the goldfield itself, and the buildings and streets already established, had shaped the town and the survey merely formalised what was already in place. This can still be seen clearly in the irregularity of the major streets. Ravenswood was gazetted as a town in 1871.

 

It was soon found that the gold at deeper levels was finely distributed in ore containing other minerals and was difficult to separate either by mechanical or chemical means. This required greater capital to fund various technologies for extraction. Many miners left for other fields, such as Charters Towers, discovered in 1871 and which quickly overtook Ravenswood as a gold producer and as the most important inland North Queensland town. Even so, Ravenswood continued to prosper due to a steady, though reduced, production of gold, the discovery of silver at nearby Totley in 1878 and as a commercial centre. By 1874, the town had a courthouse and police station, a post and telegraph office, a hospital, and a school. In 1872, the first small School of Arts was formed, providing a lending library, newspapers and a meeting place for its members and in 1875 a separate library building was constructed beside it.

 

The Ravenswood School Of Arts:

 

The School of Arts building is a timber hall, built in 1884 beside a former School of Arts structure then used as a library. It became the principal theatre, cinema, and social venue of Ravenswood and continued a series of facilities provided to the community of Ravenswood since 1872.

 

The first Mechanic's Institutes or Schools of Arts were established in Britain in the early 1800s and were intended to assist self improvement and to promote moral, social, and intellectual growth, by providing lectures, discussions and lending libraries to a rising middle class. At the time there were no public libraries and books were expensive, so that access to books by borrowing as subscribers provided an important educational and recreational service. The first School of Arts committee in Queensland was established in Brisbane in 1849 with the aim of 'the advancement of the community in literary, philosophic and scientific subjects'. As towns and districts became established, local committees were formed to establish schools of arts and they became one of the principal sources of adult education.

 

Ravenswood's economy received a boost in the mid-1880s by the arrival of the railway in 1884 and the use of improved means to extract gold from ore. A new generation of public buildings began to replace those from the early days of the field, including a police station and courthouse, post office, and hospital. In 1884, the current hall was built beside the library, presumably replacing the first small hall. In the late nineteenth century Schools of Arts expanded their aims to include the promotion of games of skill and intellectual amusements. The new hall provided the facilities for the staging of plays and concerts and became a focal point of entertainment for townspeople. It was used as a meeting hall, dance hall, and a live theatre. An amateur dramatic society staged annual productions and a School concert and Saint Patrick's Day concert were annual events.

 

In 1899, the New Ravenswood Company was formed by A.L. Wilson who raised overseas capital, reopened old mines and used modern methods to rework tailings more efficiently. The shareholders recouped their investment in the first two years and this drew world-wide interest. It was the beginning of Ravenswood's most prosperous period, which lasted for several years. However, after 1908, the cost of extraction and continued exploration grew as returns lessened and after the end of World War I, it became apparent that it would not pick up again. In 1916 rail services were cut and in 1917 the New Ravenswood Company closed.

 

In the 1920s, buildings, as well as people, left Ravenswood, as timber buildings were relocated in other towns. There was a small revival in the 1930s and early 1940s as new technology allowed for economical mining of lower grade ores. However, by the 1960s, the population fell to 70. This was to be its lowest level, as tourists began to take an interest in the town, studies were made of the buildings and work began to conserve them. In the 1980s the whole town was listed by the Australian Heritage Commission and the National Trust of Queensland. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold Ltd opened a new open cut mine using modern heap leaching processes.

 

In 1989 Cyclone Aivu damaged the facade of the hall and caused the complete collapse of the library. This building was propped by the community but eventually demolished in 1992 as it was thought unsafe. The hall was repaired and the front reconstructed to resemble its original appearance In 1990 the Dalrymple Shire Council and Carpentaria Gold financed extensive renovations to the hall. Its official opening took place on Sunday, the 29th of September 1991, since when it has again become a focus for community activities and celebrations including the "Back To Ravenswood Weekend" held each year.

 

The Cake Shop:

 

The Cake Shop is located on the western side of Macrossan Street near the School of Arts. It is thought to have been built in the 1880s and may have been first used by Jun Yeung Wong and Company as a store and an outlet for garden produce. It has had a variety of tenants over the years and is best remembered by people in the district as a cake or pie shop.

 

Ravenswood was one of several important goldfields which formed a major component in the development of North Queensland. The need to access and exploit gold finds determined the path of railways, the establishment of related industries and commerce and the location of settlements. Some of these were short lived 'rushes', where tent and shanty townships disappeared almost as quickly as they rose. Other settlements based on goldfields became established towns with government and civic buildings, shops and family homes and survived as such. A few became important centres, only to fade away as gold yields fell. Ravenswood was one of these.

 

In 1882 the land on which the shop stands was subdivided from the block granted to Ebenezer Roberts the previous year and was purchased by Frederick Wise. Wise kept a store and was Vice President of the School of Arts. An early resident of Ravenswood remembered the store as having been used by the Chinese as a general store, produce outlet, and a gold exchange during the 'rush' years, although this may have simply taken the form of accepting payment for goods in gold. The name Jun Yeung Wong and Company was faintly visible on the front of the store until the 1960s, although it is not recorded in post office directories. Ravenswood had a significant minority of Chinese amongst its population in the nineteenth century, although, as with other goldfields, there is now little evidence of their presence.

 

In 1904 the property was acquired by Daniel Patience, apparently as an investment, but run by a Mrs Watson as a cordial shop and manufactory as an adjunct to James Watson's aerated waters factory until 1918. By this time Ravenswood was in serious decline, after having enjoyed a boom between 1900 and 1908 due to more modern techniques being applied to ore processing. However, the cost of extraction and continued exploration rose as returns fell and after the end of the war it became apparent that it would not pick up again. In 1918 the shop was sold to the Kluver family. Herbert Kluver was a carrier and his wife ran the shop as refreshment rooms.

 

In 1924 the shop was bought by Ethel Wadsworth who ran refreshment rooms throughout the small revival of the 1930s and early 1940s as new technology allowed for economical mining of lower grade ores, but closed in 1947. It was grandly called a restaurant in its closing years but seems to have been actually a cake and pie shop that provided table service for customers. This is the use best remembered by local people. It may have been empty for a while before being sold to Gertrude Blackman in 1952. Its use during that time is not known but by then there were very few businesses in town and its use as a residence is remembered locally. It was purchased by the owners of Ravenswood Station in 1966 and was used at one time to store fodder. During this period the population of Ravenswood fell to 70.

 

The present owner purchased the Cake Shop in 1986, but in 1989 it was severely damaged by two cyclones. A grant from the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage in 1991, together with assistance from the Dalrymple Shire Council, allowed the store to be repaired and the store front to be reconstructed reusing original materials where possible. In 1993 the rear of the shop and an attached residence were demolished.

 

A gift, craft, and cake shop was opened in the building after renovations.

 

The Imperial Hotel:

 

The Imperial Hotel, a striking two storey brick hotel in the main Street of Ravenswood, is one of a handful of buildings which survive from this once important mining town. Constructed in 1901 for James Delaney and run by members of this family for most of the twentieth century, it is evidence of Ravenswood's prosperity during its boom period.

 

The discovery of several important goldfields in Queensland in the nineteenth century formed a major component in the development of the North.. The need to access and exploit gold finds determined the path of railways, the establishment of related industries and commerce and the location of settlements. Some of these were short lived 'rushes', where tent and shanty townships disappeared almost as quickly as they rose. Other settlements based on goldfields became established towns with government and civic buildings, shops and family homes and survived as such. A few became important centres, only to fade away as gold yields fell. Ravenswood was one of these.

 

The area was first settled by Europeans following the establishment of Bowen in 1861. Pastoral runs were soon set up in the hinterland, including the area on which the Ravenswood field was to develop. Gold had been found in north Queensland at Star River in 1865 and this triggered further exploration. Gold was found at Merri Merriwa, the run on which the town of Ravenswood stands, in 1867, although it was reported as being on the adjoining property of Ravenswood, the name by which the field was always known. The first claim made was the 'Perseverance', later to be known as the 'Donnybrook' mine. This has a connection with the Imperial since the success of the mine is said to have provided James Delaney with the capital with which to build the hotel.

 

Much of the gold initially found was in a triangle in and around three dry creeks which soon formed the focus for a tent and shanty settlement. Ravenswood gold was in reefs and a small battery was first set up in 1869, followed by the Lady Marian Mill in 1870. The settlement was also surveyed at this time, but by then the goldfield itself and the buildings and streets already established had shaped the town and the survey merely formalised what was already in place. This can still be seen clearly in the irregularity of the major streets. Ravenswood was gazetted as a town in 1871 and at this time it had 30 hotels and a population of about 1000.

 

It was also beginning to have problems as gold at deeper levels proved to be finely distributed in ore containing other minerals and was difficult to separate either by mechanical or chemical means. This required greater capital to fund various technologies for extraction. Many miners left for other fields, such as Charters Towers, discovered in 1871 and which quickly overtook Ravenswood as a gold producer and as the most important inland North Queensland town. Despite this, Ravenswood continued to prosper due to a steady, though reduced, production of gold, the discovery of silver at nearby Totley in 1878 and as a commercial centre. Shanties were replaced by sawn timber buildings and as single miners left, more families moved in. The stability of the town was assisted by linking of Ravenswood to the Townsville/Charters Towers railway line in 1884. In this year the Ravenswood Gold Company was formed and experimented with better means to process local ore. In 1899 the New Ravenswood Company was formed by A.L. Wilson who raised overseas capital, reopened old mines and used modern methods to rework tailings more efficiently. The shareholders recouped their investment in the first two years and this drew world-wide interest. It was the beginning of Ravenswood's most prosperous period.

 

In 1900 James Delaney applied for a licence for a new 18 bedroom hotel. He had been the licensee of the Commercial Hotel since 1896 when he married Anne Browne, possibly a connection of the owner of the town's most prominent hostelry, Browne's Ravenswood Hotel. The site purchased by Delaney was separated from Browne's by only 2 shops and he opened his splendid two storey Imperial Hotel in early 1901. On the night of the 18 April, 1901, the Imperial burned to the ground taking with it the whole block of buildings, with the exception of Browne's hotel, which had been protected by a brick wall. The damage was estimated at £20,000. The wall had possibly been erected as a firewall as both the Ravenswood Hotel and the shops Browne owned alongside it were timber, as were virtually all of the buildings in Ravenswood. Closely built timber structures and the lack of an adequate water supply for fire fighting made it possible for fires to race along a block until reaching a gap which acted as a fire break, a fact underlined by a similar fire on the opposite side of the street only three months later. The owners agreed to use the same architect, Eaton, Bates and Polin, to redesign the whole block and tenders were called in early May 1901. The shops between the Ravenswood and the Imperial were replaced by 'Browne's Buildings', Trehearn built a new shop for his former tenant, James Tait & Co. and the bakery and Commercial Hotel, both owned by the Estate of Michael Franzman, were replaced by 3 shops.

 

Ravenswood had produced bricks since its early years and a team of bricklayers is thought to have already been on the field, brought in by A.L. Wilson to rebuild mining structures such as chimneys. It is said that bricks were brought in from Townsville, but these may have been the cream face bricks applied in bands as a feature of the new buildings and seen to striking effect on the Imperial, which became the centrepiece of two rows of handsome shops.

 

Delaney died in July 1902 but had already made the hotel over the his wife in 1901. The Delaney's had four daughters, Mary Ellen (1896), Kathleen (1898), Teresa (1899) and Johanna (1901) who at the time of his death were aged between six years and eleven months. In the early years Mrs Delaney appears to have employed a manager, but in 1906 took over the management herself, pending a proposed transfer of the license. In the event, she continued to run the hotel, assisted by her daughters as they grew up.

 

The population of Ravenswood peaked in 1903 at 4700 but after 1908 the town began to decline. As time went by the cost of extraction grew as returns lessened and Wilson lost money searching for 'mother' lodes at deep levels and began to lay off miners. A strike in 1912 dragged out for eight months causing hardship and although judgement eventually favoured the miners, Wilson could no longer afford to employ many of them. The decline of the Ravenswood mines continued with the outbreak of war in 1914 increasing costs and disruptions to the labour supply. Buildings began to be sold for removal and in 1916 rail services were cut. In 1917 the New Ravenswood Company closed.

 

In the 1920s most of the buildings in Ravenswood were moved away, but the Imperial, being a brick building, could not be moved and continued to trade. Ravenswood Shire ceased to exist in 1929 and was absorbed into Dalrymple Shire. In 1930 Ravenswood became the first Queensland town to lose its railway connection. A small revival occurred during the 1930s and a shaft was sunk next to the hotel, but most gold was gained by applying more modern extraction processes to known sites. This did not make much difference to the life of the town and by the 1960s it had reached its lowest ebb with a population of about 70. At this point, tourists began to take an interest in the town, studies were made of the buildings and work began to conserve them. In the 1980s the whole town was listed by the Australian Heritage Commission and the National Trust of Queensland. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold Ltd opened a new open cut mine using modern heap leaching processes.

 

Throughout the difficult times in Ravenswood, the hotel continued to trade. Anne Delaney died in 1968 and the hotel was then run by Teresa (Tessa) who died in 1980 and Jo who died in 1989. The hotel then passed to Mary (Maisie), the only married daughter, and her three daughters, Kathleen having died early. In 1994 it was sold to local owners and still operates as a hotel. Ravenswood's two hotels have helped to maintain an economic life in the town and continue to offer accommodation and recreational facilities.

 

The buildings which flanked the hotel have been demolished, the last bay of Browne's Buildings within recent years, so the hotel now stands alone. The new owners have redecorated some of the bedrooms on the first floor and have removed some of the dining room furniture into storage to create a pool room at the front of the hotel.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Bed and Breakfast establishment in Flodabay on the east coast of Harris, with the Isle of Skye visible on the horizon. The roads were treacherous this night so shooting locations were limited to those within walking distance.

LARGE view

 

4 minute exposure

Interior: blue gelled flash

Exterior: bare LED on gable end and porch

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Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 12, 1964.

 

The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau. While these areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, each retains its own character. Author Edward Abbey, a frequent visitor, described the Canyonlands as "the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth—there is nothing else like it anywhere."

 

In the early 1950s, Bates Wilson, then superintendent of Arches National Monument, began exploring the area to the south and west of Moab, Utah. After seeing what is now known as the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Wilson began advocating for the establishment of a new national park that would include the Needles. Additional explorations by Wilson and others expanded the areas proposed for inclusion into the new national park to include the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers, the Maze District, and Horseshoe Canyon.

 

In 1961, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was scheduled to address a conference at Grand Canyon National Park. On his flight to the conference, he flew over the Confluence (where the Colorado and Green rivers meet). The view apparently sparked Udall's interest in Wilson's proposal for a new national park in that area and Udall began promoting the establishment of Canyonlands National Park.

 

Utah Senator Frank Moss first introduced legislation into Congress to create Canyonlands National Park. His legislation attempted to satisfy both nature preservationists' and commercial developers' interests. Over the next four years, his proposal was struck down, debated, revised, and reintroduced to Congress many times before being passed and signed into creation.

 

In September, 1964, after several years of debate, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Pub.L. 88–590, which established Canyonlands National Park as a new national park. Bates Wilson became the first superintendent of the new park and is often referred to as the "Father of Canyonlands."

 

The Colorado River and Green River combine within the park, dividing it into three districts called the Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. The Colorado River flows through Cataract Canyon below its confluence with the Green River.

 

The Island in the Sky district is a broad and level mesa in the northern section of the park, between the Colorado and Green rivers. The district has many viewpoints overlooking the White Rim, a sandstone bench 1,200 feet (370 m) below the Island, and the rivers, which are another 1,000 feet (300 m) below the White Rim.

 

The Needles district is located south of the Island in the Sky, on the east side of the Colorado River. The district is named for the red and white banded rock pinnacles which are a major feature of the area. Various other naturally sculpted rock formations are also within this district, including grabens, potholes, and arches. Unlike Arches National Park, where many arches are accessible by short to moderate hikes, most of the arches in the Needles district lie in backcountry canyons, requiring long hikes or four-wheel drive trips to reach them.

 

The Ancestral Puebloans inhabited this area and some of their stone and mud dwellings are well-preserved, although the items and tools they used were mostly removed by looters. The Ancestral Puebloans also created rock art in the form of petroglyphs, most notably on Newspaper Rock along the Needles access road.

 

The Maze district is located west of the Colorado and Green rivers. The Maze is the least accessible section of the park, and one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the United States.

 

A geographically detached section of the park located north of the Maze district, Horseshoe Canyon contains panels of rock art made by hunter-gatherers from the Late Archaic Period (2000-1000 BC) pre-dating the Ancestral Puebloans. Originally called Barrier Canyon, Horseshoe's artifacts, dwellings, pictographs, and murals are some of the oldest in America. The images depicting horses date from after 1540 AD, when the Spanish reintroduced horses to America.

 

Since the 1950s, scientists have been studying an area of 200 acres (81 ha) completely surrounded by cliffs. The cliffs have prevented cattle from ever grazing on the area's 62 acres (25 ha) of grassland. According to the scientists, the site may contain the largest undisturbed grassland in the Four Corners region. Studies have continued biannually since the mid-1990s. The area has been closed to the public since 1993 to maintain the nearly pristine environment.

 

Mammals that roam this park include black bears, coyotes, skunks, bats, elk, foxes, bobcats, badgers, ring-tailed cats, pronghorns, desert bighorn sheep, and cougars. Desert cottontails, kangaroo rats and mule deer are commonly seen by visitors.

 

At least 273 species of birds inhabit the park. A variety of hawks and eagles are found, including the Cooper's hawk, the northern goshawk, the sharp-shinned hawk, the red-tailed hawk, the golden and bald eagles, the rough-legged hawk, the Swainson's hawk, and the northern harrier. Several species of owls are found, including the great horned owl, the northern saw-whet owl, the western screech owl, and the Mexican spotted owl. Grebes, woodpeckers, ravens, herons, flycatchers, crows, bluebirds, wrens, warblers, blackbirds, orioles, goldfinches, swallows, sparrows, ducks, quail, grouse, pheasants, hummingbirds, falcons, gulls, and ospreys are some of the other birds that can be found.

 

Several reptiles can be found, including eleven species of lizards and eight species of snake (including the midget faded rattlesnake). The common kingsnake and prairie rattlesnake have been reported in the park, but not confirmed by the National Park Service.

 

The park is home to six confirmed amphibian species, including the red-spotted toad, Woodhouse's toad, American bullfrog, northern leopard frog, Great Basin spadefoot toad, and tiger salamander. The canyon tree frog was reported to be in the park in 2000, but was not confirmed during a study in 2004.

 

Canyonlands National Park contains a wide variety of plant life, including 11 cactus species,[34] 20 moss species, liverworts, grasses and wildflowers. Varieties of trees include netleaf hackberry, Russian olive, Utah juniper, pinyon pine, tamarisk, and Fremont's cottonwood. Shrubs include Mormon tea, blackbrush, four-wing saltbush, cliffrose, littleleaf mountain mahogany, and snakeweed

 

Cryptobiotic soil is the foundation of life in Canyonlands, providing nitrogen fixation and moisture for plant seeds. One footprint can destroy decades of growth.

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Canyonlands National Park has a cold semi-arid climate ("BSk"). The plant hardiness zones at the Island in the Sky and Needles District Visitor Centers are 7a with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of 4.0 °F (-15.6 °C) and 2.9 °F (-16.2 °C), respectively.

 

The National Weather Service has maintained two cooperative weather stations in the park since June 1965. Official data documents the desert climate with less than 10 inches (250 millimetres) of annual rainfall, as well as hot, mostly dry summers and cold, occasionally wet winters. Snowfall is generally light during the winter.

 

The station in The Neck region reports an average January temperature of 29.6 °F and an average July temperature of 79.3 °F. Average July temperatures range from a high of 90.8 °F (32.7 °C) to a low of 67.9 °F (19.9 °C). There are an average of 45.7 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 117.3 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 105 °F (41 °C) on July 15, 2005, and the lowest recorded temperature was −13 °F (−25 °C) on February 6, 1989. Average annual precipitation is 9.33 inches (237 mm). There are an average of 59 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1984, with 13.66 in (347 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.63 in (118 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 5.19 in (132 mm) in October 2006. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.76 in (45 mm) on April 9, 1978. Average annual snowfall is 22.8 in (58 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 47.4 in (120 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 27.0 in (69 cm) in January 1978.

 

The station in The Needles region reports an average January temperature of 29.7 °F and an average July temperature of 79.1 °F.[44] Average July temperatures range from a high of 95.4 °F (35.2 °C) to a low of 62.4 °F (16.9 °C). There are an average of 75.4 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 143.6 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 107 °F (42 °C) on July 13, 1971, and the lowest recorded temperature was −16 °F (−27 °C) on January 16, 1971. Average annual precipitation is 8.49 in (216 mm). There are an average of 56 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1969, with 11.19 in (284 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.25 in (108 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 4.43 in (113 mm) in October 1972. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.56 in (40 mm) on September 17, 1999. Average annual snowfall is 14.4 in (37 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 39.3 in (100 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 24.0 in (61 cm) in March 1985.

 

National parks in the Western US are more affected by climate change than the country as a whole, and the National Park Service has begun research into how exactly this will effect the ecosystem of Canyonlands National Park and the surrounding areas and ways to protect the park for the future. The mean annual temperature of Canyonlands National Park increased by 2.6 °F (1.4 °C) from 1916 to 2018. It is predicted that if current warming trends continue, the average highs in the park during the summer will be over 100 °F (40 °C) by 2100. In addition to warming, the region has begun to see more severe and frequent droughts which causes native grass cover to decrease and a lower flow of the Colorado River. The flows of the Upper Colorado Basin have decreased by 300,000 acre⋅ft (370,000,000 m3) per year, which has led to a decreased amount of sediment carried by the river and rockier rapids which are more frequently impassable to rafters. The area has also begun to see an earlier spring, which will lead to changes in the timing of leaves and flowers blooming and migrational patterns of wildlife that could lead to food shortages for the wildlife, as well as a longer fire season.

 

The National Park Service is currently closely monitoring the impacts of climate change in Canyonlands National Park in order to create management strategies that will best help conserve the park's landscapes and ecosystems for the long term. Although the National Park Service's original goal was to preserve landscapes as they were before European colonization, they have now switched to a more adaptive management strategy with the ultimate goal of conserving the biodiversity of the park. The NPS is collaborating with other organizations including the US Geological Survey, local indigenous tribes, and nearby universities in order to create a management plan for the national park. Right now, there is a focus on research into which native plants will be most resistant to climate change so that the park can decide on what to prioritize in conservation efforts. The Canyonlands Natural History Association has been giving money to the US Geological Survey to fund this and other climate related research. They gave $30,000 in 2019 and $61,000 in 2020.

 

A subsiding basin and nearby uplifting mountain range (the Uncompahgre) existed in the area in Pennsylvanian time. Seawater trapped in the subsiding basin created thick evaporite deposits by Mid Pennsylvanian. This, along with eroded material from the nearby mountain range, became the Paradox Formation, itself a part of the Hermosa Group. Paradox salt beds started to flow later in the Pennsylvanian and probably continued to move until the end of the Jurassic. Some scientists believe Upheaval Dome was created from Paradox salt bed movement, creating a salt dome, but more modern studies show that the meteorite theory is more likely to be correct.

 

A warm shallow sea again flooded the region near the end of the Pennsylvanian. Fossil-rich limestones, sandstones, and shales of the gray-colored Honaker Trail Formation resulted. A period of erosion then ensued, creating a break in the geologic record called an unconformity. Early in the Permian an advancing sea laid down the Halgaito Shale. Coastal lowlands later returned to the area, forming the Elephant Canyon Formation.

 

Large alluvial fans filled the basin where it met the Uncompahgre Mountains, creating the Cutler red beds of iron-rich arkose sandstone. Underwater sand bars and sand dunes on the coast inter-fingered with the red beds and later became the white-colored cliff-forming Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Brightly colored oxidized muds were then deposited, forming the Organ Rock Shale. Coastal sand dunes and marine sand bars once again became dominant, creating the White Rim Sandstone.

 

A second unconformity was created after the Permian sea retreated. Flood plains on an expansive lowland covered the eroded surface and mud built up in tidal flats, creating the Moenkopi Formation. Erosion returned, forming a third unconformity. The Chinle Formation was then laid down on top of this eroded surface.

 

Increasingly dry climates dominated the Triassic. Therefore, sand in the form of sand dunes invaded and became the Wingate Sandstone. For a time climatic conditions became wetter and streams cut channels through the sand dunes, forming the Kayenta Formation. Arid conditions returned to the region with a vengeance; a large desert spread over much of western North America and later became the Navajo Sandstone. A fourth unconformity was created by a period of erosion.

 

Mud flats returned, forming the Carmel Formation, and the Entrada Sandstone was laid down next. A long period of erosion stripped away most of the San Rafael Group in the area, along with any formations that may have been laid down in the Cretaceous period.

 

The Laramide orogeny started to uplift the Rocky Mountains 70 million years ago and with it, the Canyonlands region. Erosion intensified and when the Colorado River Canyon reached the salt beds of the Paradox Formation the overlying strata extended toward the river canyon, forming features such as The Grabens. Increased precipitation during the ice ages of the Pleistocene quickened the rate of canyon excavation along with other erosion. Similar types of erosion are ongoing, but occur at a slower rate.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Proposals for a university in Queensland began in the 1870s. A Royal Commission in 1874, chaired by Sir Charles Lilley, recommended the immediate establishment of a university. Those against a university argued that technical rather than academic education was more important in an economy dominated by primary industry. Those in favour of the university, in the face of this opposition, distanced themselves from Oxford and Cambridge and proposed instead a model derived from the mid-western states of the USA. A second Royal Commission in 1891 recommended the inclusion of five faculties in a new university; Arts, Law, Medicine, Science and Applied Science. Education generally was given a low priority in Queensland's budgets, and in a colony with a literacy rate of 57% in 1861, primary education was the first concern well ahead of secondary and technical education. The government, despite the findings of the Royal Commissions, was unwilling to commit funds to the establishment of a university.

 

In 1893 the Queensland University Extension Movement was begun by a group of private individuals who organised public lecture courses in adult education, hoping to excite wider community support for a university in Queensland. In 1894, 245 students were enrolled in the extension classes and the lectures were described as practical and useful. In 1906 the University Extension Movement staged the University Congress, a forum for interested delegates to promote the idea of a university. Opinion was mobilised, a fund was started, and a draft Bill for a Queensland University was prepared. Stress was laid on the practical aspects of university education and its importance for the commerce of Queensland. The proceedings of the Congress were forwarded to Premier Kidston. In October 1906, sixty acres in Victoria Park were gazetted for university purposes.

 

The University of Queensland was established by an Act of State Parliament on the 10th of December 1909 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Queensland's separation from the colony of New South Wales. The Act allowed for the university to be governed by a senate of 20 men and Sir William MacGregor, the incoming Governor, was appointed the first chancellor with RH Roe as the vice chancellor. Old Government House in George Street was set aside for the University following the departure of the Governor to the Bardon residence, Fernberg, sparking the first debates about the best location for the university.

 

In 1910 the first teaching faculties were created. These included Engineering, Classics, Mathematics, and Chemistry. In December of the same year, the Senate appointed the first four professors; BD Steele in chemistry, JL Michie in classics, H. Priestly in mathematics and A Gibson in engineering. In 1911 the first students enrolled.

 

Practically from the start there was controversy about a permanent site for the University. Old Government House was too small and was seen by many as evidence merely of government parsimony. There was not much room for expansion and there were conflicts with the neighbouring Brisbane Central Technical College. Victoria Park had been chosen in 1906 for a permanent site and in 1922 a further 170 acres were vested in the University. The high cost of preparing the steeply sloping land at Victoria Park for building made it a less than ideal site despite its central location and proximity to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Yeronga Park and Saint Lucia were considered as options. But in 1926 the whole issue was transformed when Doctor James O'Neil Mayne and Miss Mary Emilia Mayne made £50,000 available to the Brisbane City Council to resume land at Saint Lucia and present it to the University. Opinion was divided with Professor Steele and many members of the medical profession against Saint Lucia because of its isolation and lack of public transport. A meeting of the Senate, on the 10th of December, voted for the Saint Lucia site on the condition that the city council provided access. Those voting for Saint Lucia included Archbishop Duhig, EJD Stanley, ACV Melbourne, and Professor Richards. Doctor Lockhart Gibson, Chancellor AJ Thynne and Archbishop Sharp were amongst those who voted for Victoria Park. In 1930 the Senate handed over Victoria Park, less eleven acres reserved for a medical school, to the Brisbane City Council in exchange for the Saint Lucia site.

 

During the years of the Depression that followed the university suffered progressive reduction of government funding. Cuts were made to both staff salaries and numbers, while student numbers trebled between 1923 and 1933. There was no prospect of building the new university until 1935 when the Premier, W. Forgan Smith, announced that the Queensland Government would undertake construction at Saint Lucia. This was one of the three major development projects initiated in the mid 1930s by the Queensland government to create employment, the others being the Stanley River Dam and the Story Bridge. The University Senate called for and received schemes from various enthusiasts, including Professor Hawken, Dr FW Robinson, AB Leven, and Dr JJC Bradfield. Taking ideas from these suggestions the Senate committee produced its own preliminary design. The principle building, containing Arts, Law and administration, was E-shaped and enclosed one side of an arcaded quadrangle. Related outer buildings contained Engineering, Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, a museum and a teachers' training college. The Queensland government, despite hopes for a competition, appointed the Sydney firm of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co as architects for the project; and Jack Francis Hennessy (1887 - 1955) produced the coherent and logical plan that still lies at the heart of the University.

 

The foundation stone was laid in 1937 by Forgan Smith but it was another year before building commenced. Construction began in March 1938 with the main building, now known as the Forgan Smith Building, and was followed shortly afterward with the lower floors of the library and the Chemistry Building. It was to proceed, due to financial constraints, in stages clockwise around the court.

 

Work was disrupted by the Second World War (WWII). The main building served its first use, from 1942 - 1944, as the headquarters of General Sir Thomas Blamey (head of the Australian Defence Forces). The army evacuated the building and work re-commenced by 1948. The Forgan Smith Building was officially opened in May 1949 by Premier Hanlon. The Duhig Library (two-stories only and named for Archbishop Sir James Duhig) was also ready by this time, as was the Steele Building (named for the first professor of chemistry, Professor Bertram Steele).

 

In 1951 the Richards Building (named for the first professor of geology, Henry Casselli Richards) was completed. In 1955 the Parnell Building (named for the inaugural professor of physics, Thomas Parnell) and an addition to the west wing of the Forgan Smith Building were completed. In 1962, jointly funded by State and Commonwealth Governments, the Goddard Building (named for the second professor of biology, Ernest Jones Goddard) was completed. In 1965 three extra floors were added to the Duhig Library to the design of James Birrell.

 

The final building at the western end of the Forgan Smith was to have been a Great Hall. JD Story, the vice chancellor from 1938 until 1960, proposed in 1959 that this be replaced by a western Arts building and in 1972 construction began on the Michie Building (named for first the professor of classics, J.L. Michie). The state government announced in 1974 that it would provide the funding to clad the building in sandstone. The Michie Building was completed in 1978.

 

In March 1979 the colonnade between the Michie Building and the Goddard Building was completed enclosing the Great Court Complex.

 

A number of changes have been made over the years to the Great Court Complex. Some of buildings have been augmented or altered: there are various structures on top of the Goddard Building, and a new, discreet addition to the Law Library at the western end of the Forgan Smith Building which was designed by Robert Riddell. Perhaps the most significant change is that the planting within the Court is less formal than originally intended, and takes little account of Hennessy's plans for strong visual axes to tie the whole Court together. Notable also in this respect are Professor Gareth Robert's master plan for the university which involved the closing of the circular drive and the placement of the Main Library and the Great Hall in front of the Forgan Smith Building.

 

The Sculptors:

 

As part of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co's original concept, it was intended that the Great Court would include extensive sculptural work portraying historical panels, statues, coats of arms and panels of Australian plant and animal life. Many of the designs were done by Leo Drinan, who was the principle architect with Hennessy, Hennessy & Co. Work on the sculptures began in 1939, with German born John Theodore Muller and Frederick James McGowan as the principle stonemasons. Work was halted by the war in 1942 and McGowan died before it resumed three years later. Muller continued to carve until his death at more than 80 years of age, in 1953. At the time of his death, all of the friezes, most of the statues, and half of the grotesques, coats of arms, arches and roundels were completed.

 

Carving virtually stopped at the University after Muller's death and resumed only after the Michie Building was under construction. A competition amongst several Queensland sculptors in 1976 led to the commissioning of Mrs Rhyl Hinwood. Mrs Hinwood has since continued to carve numerous grotesques and coats of arms for the Court, as well as the two monumental figures at the main entrance to the Goddard Building.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Lillie's Victorian Establishment

New York City

  

Selby´s origins date from the establishment of a Viking settlement on the banks of the River Ouse. It is believed that Selby originated as a settlement called Seletun, which was referred to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 779.

 

Selby Abbey was founded by Benedict of Auxerre in 1069 and subsequently built by the de Lacy family. Archbishop Walter Giffard visited the monastery in 1275 by commission, and several monks and the abbot were charged with a list of faults including loose living: many complaints referred to misconduct with married women. Just four years later Archbishop William de Wickwane made a visitation, and found fault with the abbot as he did not observe the Rule of Saint Benedict. Things had not improved much in 1306 when Archbishop William Greenfield visited, and similar visitations in later years resulted in similar findings.

 

The community rebuilt the choir in the early 14th century, but in 1340 a fire destroyed the chapter house, dormitory, treasury and part of the church. The damage was repaired and the decorated windows in the south aisle of the nave were installed.

 

In 1380 there were the abbot and twenty-five monks. In 1393 Pope Boniface IX granted an indulgence to pilgrims who contributed to the conservation of the chapel of the Holy Cross in the abbey.

 

Between 1069 and 1539, the year of the dissolution of the English monasteries under King Henry VIII, there were 34 abbots, many of whom made structural alterations. The church is built on sandy ground and has suffered from subsidence. Many areas collapsed in the 17th century, but these were rebuilt. Between 1871 and 1873, the church was restored. Further damage was caused by a fire in 1906.

   

XX367, Bristol Britannia Srs-312F (CN 31421) "Team Spirit" of the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment Boscombe Down seen at the International Air Tattoo held at RAF Greenham Common on 23 July 1983. First delivered to BOAC in May 1957 as G-AVOM, the aircraft moved to British Eagle in 1964 where she recieved the "Team Spirit" name. Following Eagles demise, Oscar Mike moved to Spain Air as EC-BSY in March 1969 before sale to the UK MoD and delivery to A&AEE in April 1972. Released from service in March 1984 the aircraft was sold to Katale Air Transport of Zaire as 9Q-CHY with whom she operated until July 1991. The aircraft was scrapped at Kinshasa in 2000. Scanned from an original 35 mm colour transparency via Hasselblad X-5

 

The art conundrum; the disconnect between society and art establishment

 

Celebrity art dealers artists and art collectors have become superstars of such caliber F. Scott Fitzgerald would’t imagine in a wildest Great Gatsby's wet dream.

The breathtaking fables of high-flying multi-million art deals inspire the sensational and entertaining articles to be written by the writers who could barely earn a living nowadays. How many people, however, actually become the art lovers learning about the adventures of the glitzy art stars? None. The art world is a lonely Narcissus that admires the own reflection. But desperately wants the public affection and attention unwilling to admit the need of new source for awe. Or how many art critics made a serious attempt to explain in written word the post post-modern art scene?

What about the artists… is next thought that comes to mind. Maybe this whole problem of art turning into a very sexy fast-money exchange business is due the bad quality artists?

Even television tried to popularize art in the attempt to create a show who wants to be the next American top model I mean artist. But the public only grow less interested, more so, the public wants to take over the art franchise after the so-called digital revolution. Masses of people who could never touch a camera for variety of reasons now turn to photography. For instance, 300 million photographs are uploaded every minute to Facebook, The numbers have power the sheer grandiosity. And yet the art world tries to keep its cool. And more so, continues to be disconnected.

Which could be good or bad depending how one looks at it. Good in a sense of art preservation, not good for survival of the franchise. In most recent global social phenomenon there’s a new traits of human behavior that present a real threat to what is known as highly developed Western culture.

Manipulating reality

Everyone makes photos and in doing so everyone selects an image to a fit some desirable standard. This is done consciously. This manifests the beginning of a creative process and is not known to the imagemanipulator who wasn’t warned about it. It would be strange digital camera was sold with a warning. right? Majority of people are now involved with photography and it seems to be a good thing, what kind of warning should be given for such innocent hobby… art is known to have healing effect, why would I assume the worse?

The latest version of the Western “Me” society is the loneliest know in human history.

Not just that. Being self-centered changes personality the further the more. I’d call it menacing loneliness, life for the purpose to create nothing but annoyance to the environment and nothing works better thinks the menacing loner than creating a false individual happy story in pictures.

The latest social development is such that people prefer visual images to direct communication using photos instead of language. Pictures speak in newly invented language to maintain one’s virtual self-centered presence with the help of the desired “realistic” images as evidence of one’s

medium.com/the-armory-art-gif/so-who-acts-like-a-whore-th...

The art collectors, art dealers art writers and the rest of the fine art establishment have the practical experience and knowledge in field of visual arts meaning they know

good art when they see it. And there are THE OTHERS who have nothing to do with the art profession. For a regular person it could take sometimes a lifetime to have developed the acquired aesthetic taste. Meanwhile the art establishment is not concerned with the educational part. It seems that the elite decided to SAVE the fine art from going INVISIBLE by paying the prices that are irrelevant to what the artwork

might actually worth. By throwing tons of cash money the collectors created some naturally occurring chain reaction. Now it is not the fine aesthetics of art that is the

main thing in the present day cultural life, its the money, honey. This highlights another disconnect that had occurred. Profitability decides what is good art and what’s not. The art industry answers with more “consumer” quality art trying to cash in.

What happens next? The digital revolution is expected to produce something “new” in the arts. What would that be not the philosophers, writers or analysts

are even trying to foretell. The faithful to the cause (the progressive growth and

enlightenment) are in the state of the disillusionment. There is no purity in art inspired by money and not the MUSE. Writers turn their back at the art as a man who would turn his back at a whore he won’t marry. To write and think about art and its future one needs the inspiration. Art that acts like a whore doesn’t inspire poetry.

A woman that sells sex…

Death of news (The art conundrum continued) 2

  

Once the average person turns antisocial there’s no doubt that the cultural/artistic establishment looses whatever little popularity it earned trying for the long periods in human history to maintain some presence among the “real” or “everyday” people and pull some degree of respect from the wide masses. No more people believe the cultural standards once they are able to manipulate reality and control the cultural standards. Even create new culture (reverse, re-culture, un-culture, de-culture, post-culture) Sounds improbable? Not if you recall the sheer weight of the numbers that this majority of population present. The stronger is the art establishment’s “standoff” to simply is process the new popular influences the deeper goes the corrosion of the aesthetics core. Similar transformations happen in the circle or creative people. Nobody is protected by a bullet proof glass to be unaffected by what is happening socially. After all this is a historical commonly experienced condition. Everyone goes through similar changes.

Of course I would presume that a professional artist is entangled into maintaining his/her cyber presence for a different reason. To spread his art and gain exposure. Better intention won’t change the outcome of the changed personality. On the path to promote his art, the artist is facing theme-world. “I wanted to change the world,” he soon admits, “But the world had changed me after its shape and image, etc.”

The me-culture breeds an army of idle over informed minds that live with chronic ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, with insomnia, with body -- dysmorphia, anorexia, obesity, addictive behaviors, and so much more that combining the whole array with the “creative” activity of self-promotion it is soon turned pathological but we are talking here —GLOBAL proportions.

THE DEATH OF NEWS

The Death of news means one thing. The dream of the unconditional social oppression by ruling class is finally realized when the PRESS IS DEAD.

People communicate with each other through social media. The news feed is where they access news shared and spread around.

When the “me culturati” social net-worker posts three hundred million picture a minute only on facebook, any news that had a slight chance to show up in the newsfeed drawn in selfies and other web-images.

The art establishment is trying not to loose the face. By expertly acquiring the “new” art to look more and more consumer — friendly henceforth the art acquisitions are the flashy ones, the really bright and glowing and sparkling with the mirror surfaces and intricately labor intense (the only grounds to be valuable and fetch the high price for the bunches and tons of handiwork.) And no artist gets away with the easily produced art, The ABSTRACT art has to be scrupulously produced not some quickie chancy or accidental improvisation.

This brings new question to the fore. The art establishment sets the consumer-friendly fashionable standards for the art items. Meanwhile the consumer turned “content creator” now had evolved into an ARTISTE the one who now is in control of each and every aspect that relates to the visuals, since anything visual is used for photography or videos. In turn all the cyber images, the pictures, the videos are produced to be posted as a part of the creator’s online identity. Meaning each person knows and wants some items that represent and promote further the Self, the me-world that is now again as the earth once was the Earth flat.

The content creator wants his/her “own art” to be worthy, to be hand-made somewhere in China in the meticulous detail to translate well on thescreen with the content creator’s online mobile profile. The Art or what it stands for now the Me-Art is created for the only reason to enhance the online persona’s presence in the me — photo collection.

Rules of Selfie The art conundrum 3

The art establishment is not really interested in how most people live and their new behavioral patterns. Or what some “nobody” would like to have as a backdrop for selfies. But the situation present a huge social phenomenon and the changed interaction with reality, the NEW REALITY (SEE the OLD REALITY), manipulated and adjusted to the standards of what is POPULAR to get attention and “likes”. The reality is transformed because of the new rule of the majority (see the old rule of the majority). What happens everywhere with everyone can’t go unnoticed. It changes many things in the world. It is the new “cyber” life style with new problems of the final ESCAPE from what we know as the physical reality.

Art establishment encourages the Consumerism . What it should start doing instead is to support the philosophical quest to build new school of thought that could help to change the ongoing social disillusionment, start creating the new utopia and ideals to inspire higher grounds and not support most base instincts of the human nature. The MORAL change is the only thing that would sustain the art franchise as an independent authority on anything related to the visual image. As one and only historically credible authority to maintain high aesthetics and in turn to prevent Atavism. It starts from the top. With the little hope that a change is possible, the need for it is especially urgent in the premise of visual art. The art establishment can no longer cater to the bad behavior of the disordered and disoriented people even with the mutual dislike.

The involvement of the masses globally in CREATIVITY that goes along with the photo production is destructive to the artistic structure. The so-called digital art and mass photography puts any artistic attempt at a meager level of not something that “goes viral” “trending” spoken ROARED about and spread like fire what happens to the things that internet population loves to share. Anything but not art indeed.

Post-medium condition

medium.com/the-armory-art-gif/the-hand-that-splashed-the-...

In her text A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, critic Rosalind Krauss expands Clement Greenberg’s description of the modernist desire for “pure” art forms in order to encompass the forms and issues of art today, the art of the “post-medium” age. She argues that while this drive for purity of art forms still exists, the forms of art themselves have evolved in such a way that the search for purity can no longer follow the same tenets. Instead of searching for painting or sculpture, the media have become so conflated that the artist must strive to attain a purification of Art itself. She mentions Joseph Kosuth’s idea that as painting and sculpture begin to come together, i.e. as different media become indistinct, the project of art will become more general, and modernist art must locate the “essence of Art itself” .

In art purity means same thing as in life – truth, not any degree of lie.

How an artist / a writer would create the pure art meaning that he/she is honest in Hemingway’s understanding? Just tell the story from experience or knowledge and don’t invent it.

In the postmodern art to be the “proper” and postmodern creator one would have to save time and deliver the truth taken from the “samples” of it. While the process is not the Hemingway’s, it is the process where someone would experience evolution of his/her personal taste. One would be able to “cheat” and make anything believable. This is the point where a crisis starts to develop. In history there is a good example of how a reputable credible establishment as the ancient philosophers had compromised their own teachings. Such is the case with Sophists. Same as Philosophy the art establishment is also one of the the historically credible ones yet same as the Philosophical establishment is develops credibility crisis. The expert Sophists would prove anything for you – if you want the black to be black –- they would prove it for you, the black to be white –- proved it to you. Henceforth if the Sophists could and did practice to prove anything it becomes quite clear that there is no truth and it means there could be no purity.

Vacuum

The art conundrum 8

Nowhere to be found any scholarly inquest about the contemporary art. Could the art

in its present OFFICIAL postmodern form in fact represent the reality?

Would the artists detached from and disconnected even be interested to know the reality? Does the contemporary art have any way of representing the so — called reality or historical period we are living in? Or is the art running behind the time or ahead of our time? In the art industry the owner of art selling business hires a worker (a consigned artist) to start the money exchange that continues for as long as the art item goes through the various stages changes hands, from the art dealer to a collector( who often flips the artwork he didn’t buy to hold) from the collector to an auction house, from the auction house to the art consumers.

At that point the “hired” artist is not a creator of the “finished” art product. More likely he/she is a small part of a larger production machine. He/she repeats the same not always in full consciousness of his/her role not as the center figure — the diva, but a part of larger scale production.

This results in a phenomenon of estrangement detachment and the disconnection. The artist is only interested in the monetary reward and quality of his art among other things which indirectly affect the profit.

The art dealer in turn is not concerned to provide his art buyers with the best and high quality art, and treats the artworks as any inventory for sale. Advertisement tactics are not that different. To sell something of questionable use and value the business would use most creative advertising and go as far as to apply pressure, use the basic human instincts to engage the buyer to the end and close the art deal. The only goal is the sale. The artwork could turn into a tedious laborious ordeal for the dealer and his artist. After the successful sale the artist would stick to the salable quality. Henceforth the creation of art is particularly for the sale and nothing else.

On the other side the society still partial to the old-fashioned concept that the culture and fine arts should serve the people at least with something useful showing that in our time similarly to other historical times anyone creative is given the freedom for the independent artistic expression.

For the common people without art background digital, computer art works as the new young anti-establishment movement.

The art establishment avoids using the term in relation to visual art. If one enters the search with key words to see if there’s any publication on the topic of multimedia art from 1960 to now there would be no results. Few attempts were made by the non — western theorists to analyze the possibilities of multimedia art and what could it evolve into in the future.

The artconundrum 7

Nobody in the art business see any possibility for the change in the current situation. On any level starting from the super rich collectors to the penniless art bloggers. The state of ignorance or hopelessness or incompetence doesn’t help to inspire anything to break the art away (to save the woman from whoring) from the commerce. They still want the woman but paying seems to be real convenient. Once you pay for LOVE you don’t have to engage the feelings. If this provides a long -- lasting business opportunity for the oldest profession, what would commercial art bring as the cultural and moral contribution, the higher priced art, the most expensive art piece by a living artist… An imprimatur from the yes-critics. Nobody even bother to deny that money driven art commerce dominates and surely it affects what is only done by inspiration.

Maybe the money-driven art is better than nothing?

The public at large always looked at the “king and his noble knights” only to observe ignore and silently hate on. Would the fine arts thrive on such high grounds surrounded by the silent but global hate? Instead of such unfortunate situation (paradoxically so as the art making is now lucrative) the artists might think that they could have already won over the people’s love by reducing the complexity of creative moment. But this is not the big idea of meeting with the masses. With the free art on the Internet the people love to finally exercise their power and with the majority vote to support the most primitive idiocy in visual terms. Hardly an artist ever lived to bring the creativity to such rot. If people support the visual rot it could be for the reason of the silent disdain to the pretentiousness of the artists who can’t win their love. No matter what the artist does, the art about people, art for people, art of people, people as art, the people (the real people) don’t buy into any of the deceptive tactics.

Who acts like a whore ?

The art conundrum 5

It’s not only what I see happening but commonly observed how the consumption of pictures substitutes reading, watching short Youtube substitutes TV programs and movies. As to the News it was previously explained hot there is no more news. It is only natural since there’s no demand for any news in the unchanged or not well adjusted to what the people want to know. In the consumption of photos there’s another phenomenon I would say. One would need to find all visual info there is meaning the endless “research” henceforth the RESEARCHER can’t stop and keep at it to exhaust all sources. Meanwhile the supposed project or “work” is disregarded. The research is THE WORK -– the agglomeration of an obscene amount of “useful” links, pics, articles and variety of the all-encompassing knowledge collected daily from the PRECIOUS sources. While the research is conducted for some purpose (like writing this article for instance, I would go in lengths to search for supporting evidence. Quite often I was brought to the new most interesting topics that I would forget what was my initial interest, what was it that I needed to back up with goof quality info). Fact is that nobody has any control over the image once it arrives to cyber. It seems that someone should be able to exploit this constant need for images same as the constant recycling of the images. Nobody seems to know how to do it. How to reign supreme as the image authority. The art establishment believes itself to be in fact the supreme authority over the image selling the art for hundreds of millions of dollars as the most valuable commodity among the cultural images. Why the art establishment is totally absent from the new publishing (since there is any other) platform of the Internet on its images sprees? With the help of the NEW INTERNET PUBLISHING the public sees what goes VIRAL and it could be anything from some ghetto street art to the things that would be hard to mention due to their utter stupidity. But those viral visual things reach out to the country of many billions Internet people. It would probably be only good or even better if the art establishment was ever concerned with the matter of reaching out to the masses. In the present moment the only thing that comes out of the elite establishment of the fine arts is the continued and unchanged concerns with the acquisitions of the artworks and upping as much as possible the dollar value as if protecting the institution of arts with loads of cash.

As to the artists — there’s no aesthetic school of thought at this point, to have any ideological direction. The artists were used to be the ones who could stand against the establishment as the Avant-garde.

Invisible Non-Stop The art conundrum 4

Rules of Selfie The art conundrum 3

Death of news (The art conundrum continued) 2

THE INTERNET PEOPLE spenddays and nights online looking at the images. This might not be a healthy or productive way to spend time but its happening.Sometimes THE INTERNET PEOPLE “actively” participate

INTERACT the way they can, by “liking” pictures, sharing links and so on. Less and less are they capable of producing an original written comment with few exceptions and for the different type People of the Internet . Some could be “talkative” bashing the DEMS and engage into the long political arguments, some could write product reviews, some could still make comments about movies. And of course there is the largest part of the population who live now the CYBER LIFE, the kids. They rarely are capable to produce any kind of comments indeed, but the kids RUN the Internet and do interact in a limited text abbreviations or in the non verbal ways. The topics to get the kids into the mood to utter any sort of comment are the Kid’s things, (the very advanced technically computer savvy children and teens) for example YOUTUBE videos of their interest. It is explained by the lost desire per se, or by the fact of a physical disability to think in the lifestyle where the majority of kids nowadays don’t get quality hours of sleeping. They are most likely are unable to focus. personal reasons they feel quite uncomfortable if not anonymous or in other words invisible and at the same time their invisibility is what contributes to the chronic emotional problems. This condition is hard to explain, one must experience it. One can’t understand it unless you ”did your time” of the online marathons being day after day in the same mode of looking at some discovered sources of pictures, savoring the visual abundance with one’s “hungry” eyes. It could go on for many days non-stop. It is a strange condition when a person can’t stop consuming the visual images. As if waiting yearning for something major, or something fantastic. That something should in some unexpected way involve the visual “treasure —hunter” who is scrolling down the newsfeeds and paying that precious deficient attention that one has gotten to the myriads of photos. It can turn into a very lengthy addiction if one had learnt how to fish out the sources for huge data of photos that is like gold mine if discovered by someone and nobody knows about it

On the establishment of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) in October 1969, the newly created Executive was keen to repaint examples of former municipal buses in to their new corporate livery of blue and cream.

 

The initial repaints had more of an impact in Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Walsall, where their municipal liveries were considerably different from that of the former Birmingham City Transport, which the new WMPTE livery was based upon.

 

69L was a former Walsall Corporation Daimler CVG6 motorbus, receiving the new WMPTE livery in January 1970. This was in stark contrast to its original allover pale-blue Walsall colours.

 

It so happened that this batch of buses (61L - 75L) were going through repaint in late 1969 into early 1970, so became some of the first recipients.

 

And all of this batch of buses only every received one repaint into these colours. So by the time the last of these vehicles were being withdrawn in early 1977, they were looking very tired.

 

27th March 1970.

Sacramento, California

 

1974 Mercury Marquis

no new political bumper stickers since 2012

few signs of movement besides weeds since then, too

 

Ginza (銀座) es un distrito de abolengo del barrio de Chūō (中央区), en Tokio, Japón. Está localizado al sur de los distritos de Yaesu y Kyobashi; al oeste del distrito de Tsukiji, al este de Yurakucho y Uchisaiwaicho; y al norte de Shinbashi. Es famoso por la concentración de grandes almacenes, boutiques y restaurantes.

Ginza era un territorio pantanoso en la época en que Tokugawa Ieyasu se mudó a Edo. Los comerciantes comenzaron a poblar el área, hasta que en 1612 se construyó una casa de moneda en la zona, la cual le dio su nombre, pues Ginza significa "lugar de la plata".

La urbanización fue destruida por el fuego en 1872, y el arquitecto inglés Thomas Waters fue el encargado de la reconstrucción. La zona se vio entonces poblada con edificios de dos y tres pisos, junto con un paseo comercial en la calle que unía al puente Shinbashi con el puente Kyōbashi. La mayoría de estos edificios ya fueron demolidos para dar paso a construcciones mayores. Sobrevive la tienda departamental Wako, en Chuo-Dori.

A lo largo del siglo XX, Ginza concentró las influencias occidentales más notorias en el país, lo cual se ha visto reforzado por la localización de los centros corporativos de varias compañías transnacionales, como Sony Corporation.

Ginza - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Ginza / Portal Oficial de Turismo de Tokyo GO TOKYO

 

Ginza ( 銀座 [ɡindza]) is a district of Chūō, Tokyo, located south of Yaesu and Kyōbashi, west of Tsukiji, east of Yūrakuchō and Uchisaiwaichō, and north of Shinbashi. It is a popular upscale shopping area of Tokyo, with numerous internationally renowned department stores, boutiques, restaurants and coffeehouses located in its vicinity. It is considered to be one of the most expensive, elegant, and luxurious streets in the world.

Ginza was a part of the old Kyobashi ward of Tokyo City, which, together with Nihonbashi and Kanda, formed the core of Shitamachi, the original downtown center of Edo (Tokyo).

Ginza was built upon a former swamp that was filled in during the 16th century. The name Ginza comes after the establishment of a silver-coin mint established there in 1612, during the Edo period.

After a devastating fire in 1872 burned down most of the area, the Meiji government designated the Ginza area as a "model of modernization." The government planned the construction of fireproof brick buildings and larger, better streets connecting Shimbashi Station all the way to the foreign concession in Tsukiji.

Soon after the fire, redevelopment schemes were prepared by Colin Alexander McVean a chief surveyor of the Public Works under direction of Yamao Yozo, but execution designs were provided by the Irish-born engineer Thomas Waters; the Bureau of Construction of the Ministry of Finance was in charge of construction. In the following year, a Western-style shopping promenade on the street from the Shinbashi bridge to the Kyōbashi bridge in the southwestern part of Chūō with two- and three-story Georgian brick buildings was completed.

These "bricktown" buildings were initially offered for sale and later were leased, but the high rent prevented many of them from being permanently occupied. Moreover, the construction was not adapted to the climate, and the bold design contrasted the traditional Japanese notion of home construction. The new Ginza was not popular with visiting foreigners, who were looking for a more Edo-styled city. Isabella Bird visited in 1878 and in 1880 implied that Ginza was less like an Oriental city than like the outskirts of Chicago or Melbourne. Philip Terry, the English writer of tour guides, likened it to Broadway, not in a positive sense.

Nevertheless, the area flourished as a symbol of "civilization and enlightenment" thanks to the presence of newspapers and magazine companies, which helped spread the latest trends of the day. The area was also known for its window displays, an example of modern marketing techniques. Everyone visited so the custom of "killing time in Ginza" developed strongly between the two world wars.

Most of these European-style buildings disappeared, but some older buildings still remain, most famously the Wakō building with the now-iconic Hattori Clock Tower. The building and the clock tower were originally built by Kintarō Hattori, the founder of Seiko.

Its recent history has seen it as a prominent outpost of Western luxury shops. Ginza is a popular destination on weekends, when the main north-south artery is closed to traffic since the 1960s, under governor Ryokichi Minobe.

Many leading fashion houses' flagship stores are located here, in the area with the highest concentration of Western shops in Tokyo. It is one of two locations in Tokyo considered by Chevalier and Mazzalovo to be the best locations for a luxury goods store. Prominent high-end retailers include the American company Carolina Herrera New York, French companies Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, Italian company Gucci and Austrian brands Swarovski and Riedel.

Flagship electronic retail stores like the Sony showroom (which closed in 2017 and new building would open in 2022) and the Apple Store are also here (Ginza 2 chome). The electronics company, Ricoh is headquartered in the Ricoh Building in Ginza. The neighborhood is a major shopping district. It is home to Wako department store, which is located in a building dating from 1894. The building has a clock tower. There are many department stores in the area, including Hankyu, Seibu, and Matsuya, in which there are many shops: grocery stores, restaurants, women and men clothes, sportswear, and jewellers etc. There are also art galleries. Kabuki-za is the theater for kabuki, one of Japanese traditional playing, and locates on between Ginza and Tsukiji. The building was opened in 1889 and has been reconstructed several times because of war and fire. The present building was built in 2013.

Each Saturday and Sunday, from 12:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m., the main street through Ginza is closed off to road traffic, allowing people to walk freely. This is called Hokōsha Tengoku (歩行者天国) or Hokoten for short, literally meaning "pedestrian heaven". There are some people who do street performance such as magic and playing instruments. As a famous photo spot, some cats sleep on signs, where people can put their own cats onto these signs. The location where cats are is different depending on the date.

 

Ginza - Wikipedia

 

What do we have here?

 

We're in Senate Square in the heart of old Helsinki.

 

On the right is a statue of Emperor Alexander II. It was:

 

Erected in 1894, to commemorate his re-establishment of the Diet of Finland in 1863 as well as his initiation of several reforms that increased Finland's autonomy from Russia. The statue comprises Alexander on a pedestal surrounded by figures representing law, culture, and peasants. The sculptor was Walter Runeberg.

 

During the Russification of Finland from 1899 onwards, the statue became a symbol of quiet resistance, with people protesting against the decrees of Nicholas II by leaving flowers at the foot of the statue of his grandfather, then known in Finland as "the good czar".

 

After Finland's independence in 1917, demands were made to remove the statue. Later, it was suggested to replace it with the equestrian statue of Mannerheim currently located on Mannerheimintie in front of the Kiasma museum. Nothing came of either of these suggestions, and today the statue is one of the major tourist landmarks of the city and a reminder of Finland's close relationship with Imperial Russia.

 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Senate_Square

 

On the right is Helsinki Cathedral (Finnish: Helsingin tuomiokirkko, Suurkirkko; Swedish: Helsingfors domkyrka, Storkyrkan)

 

It is the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran cathedral of the Diocese of Helsinki, located in the neighborhood of Kruununhaka in the centre of Helsinki, Finland. The church was originally built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. It was also known as St Nicholas' Church until the independence of Finland in 1917.

 

A distinctive landmark in the Helsinki cityscape, with its tall, green dome surrounded by four smaller domes, the building is in the neoclassical style. It was designed by Carl Ludvig Engel as the climax of his Senate Square layout: it is surrounded by other, smaller buildings designed by him.

 

The church's plan is a Greek cross (a square centre and four equilateral arms), symmetrical in each of the four cardinal directions, with each arm's façade featuring a colonnade and pediment. Engel originally intended to place a further row of columns on the western end to mark the main entrance opposite the eastern altar, but this was never built.

 

The cathedral was built on the site of the smaller Ulrika Eleonora Church, which was dedicated to its patroness, Ulrika Eleonora, Queen of Sweden. A facsimile of this church, made entirely from snow, was constructed on Senate Square in the early 2000s.

 

Helsinki Old Church was built between 1824 and 1826 in nearby Kamppi to serve the parish while the Ulrika Eleonora Church was being demolished and until the consecration of the new cathedral.

 

The building was later altered by Engel's successor Ernst Lohrmann, whose four small domes emphasise the architectural connection to the cathedral's model, Saint Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

 

Lohrmann also erected two free-standing bell towers, as well as larger-than-life sized zinc statues of the Twelve Apostles at the apexes and corners of the roofline.

 

The altarpiece was painted by Carl Timoleon von Neff and donated to the church by emperor Nicholas I.

 

The cathedral crypt was renovated in the 1980s by architects Vilhelm Helander and Juha Leiviskä for use in exhibitions and church functions; Helander was also responsible for conservation repairs on the cathedral in the late 1990s.

 

Today, the cathedral is one of Helsinki's most popular tourist attractions. More than 350,000 people visit the church each year, some to attend religious events, but mostly as tourists. The church is in regular use for services of worship and special events such as weddings.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Cathedral

 

But wait,there's more!

 

The entire ensemble, parts of which cannot be seen, is called Senate Square.

 

The Senate Square (Finnish: Senaatintori, Swedish: Senatstorget) presents Carl Ludvig Engel's architecture as a unique allegory of political, religious, scientific and commercial powers in the centre of Helsinki, Finland.

 

Senate Square and its surroundings make up the oldest part of central Helsinki. Landmarks and famous buildings surrounding the square are the Helsinki Cathedral, the Government Palace, main building of the University of Helsinki, and Sederholm House (Finnish: Sederholmin talo), the oldest building of central Helsinki dating from 1757.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Senate_Square

 

This Sea King, XV651, was a welcome participant at the 1975 'RAF At Home' held at Biggin Hill.

 

It was operated by the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment and was trialling the Seaspray radar that was being fitted to the 'new' Westland Lynx.

 

The airframe still seemed to be in existence during 2017 - one of several sitting at Edmondsley in County Durham.

 

Biggin Hill, Kent

20th September 1975

 

Praktica LTL, Kodachrome

  

19750920 4709 XV651 RRE BIG clean std

While out on Saturday

Beaver, Oregon

 

Travelers passing through Beaver might find themselves puzzled over the nature of the newest establishment here: Becker’s Cabins Auto Camp. But, those of a certain age, will know exactly what it is.

 

“Back in the old days when people didn’t camp in tents anymore, the auto camps were little cabins and there was always a place to park your Model T,” said Owner Julie Horine. “There are not many that exist anymore, but a lot of the older people know what auto camps were. They know when they see the sign, they go ‘Oh my gosh, it’s like when we were kids and we would go camping with our families and stay at the old resort.’”

 

Julie owns the lodging with her daughter Jenny.

 

It’s believed that the original owner, Ben Becker, built the cabins in the 1940s as rentals to raise money to send his children to Christian college.

 

The Horines bought Becker’s home in 2008 and the cabins a few years later. Of the four cabins, two are rentals, a third is an antique store and the fourth, Jenny and her family call home.

 

The rentals feature vintage decor, including iron beds and bent willow furniture, and full kitchens.

 

People often discover the rental cabins when they stop by the antique shop, where Julie specializes in “petroliana,” a new word for old gas station collectibles.

 

Article by: Lori Tobias

Reference: tillamookcoast.com/blog/beckers-cabins-auto-camps

 

This image is best viewed in large screen.

 

I appreciate your visit and any faves or comments are always greatly appreciated...so thank you very much!

 

Sonja :-)

Royal Aircraft Establishment Dakota C3 ZA947 at RAF Greenham Common in June 1981.

Sporting its revised livery with the purple stripes replacing dark blue at Shannon 17/9/17.

Badbea is a former clearance village perched on the steep slopes above the cliff tops of Berriedale on the east coast of Caithness, Scotland. Situated around 5 miles (8 km) north of Helmsdale, the village was settled in the 18th and 19th centuries by families evicted from their homes when the straths of Langwell, Ousdale and Berriedale were cleared for the establishment of sheep farms. The last resident left the village in 1911 and a monument was erected by the son of former inhabitant, Alexander Robert Sutherland, who had emigrated to New Zealand in 1839. Today, the ruins of the village are preserved as a tourist attraction and memorial to the Highland Clearances.

 

Badbea is accessed by a footpath from a lay-by on the A9 road near Ousdale. The dwellings have all fallen into ruin, and little remains, other than a few drystone walls, although the outlines of the buildings and the remains of the crop fields are still visible. There is signage by the lay-by and around the village, which gives visitors an insight into the lives of the former inhabitants and the history of the site.

 

Toward the end of the 18th century tenant farmers were evicted from their homes across the Scottish highlands to make way for sheep farming. From 1792 onwards, displaced families began to arrive in Badbea, a small area of rough, steeply sloping land, squeezed between the high drystone wall of the sheep enclosures and the precipitous cliffs of Berriedale above the North Sea. Many of the families were from nearby Ousdale, where landowner Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster had evicted them from their crofts in order to introduce sheep. Others came from the villages of Auchencraig, on the Langwell Estate and Kildonan. When the families arrived they were given small plots to farm, but had to clear the land, hack out the plots from the steep slopes, and build their own houses from the stones they found. In 1814 the estate was sold to James Home, by which time there were 80 inhabitants. During the late 19th century the main employment of herring fishing was discontinued by the then Laird, Donald Home, in favour of salmon fishing and the population declined as the families moved away to seek a better life. One of the inhabitants, Alexander Sutherland, had emigrated to New Zealand as early as 1838.

 

The plots of land, or crofts, had room for a longhouse with a byre at one end, outbuildings, and a kitchen garden or kailyard. The rest of the available land could only support some small vegetable plots and a few cows, pigs and chickens for each family; fresh water came from a nearby spring. There was only one horse in the village and no plough, so a chaib (a kind of spade) was used to plough the soil and the harrow was pulled by a man. Each house had its own spinning wheel, and all the women learned to spin and card. The men mainly worked as herring fishermen from nearby Berriedale and the women gutted the fish that were caught. While the women worked, their livestock, and even their children, were tethered to rocks or posts to prevent them from being blown over the cliffs or into the sea by the fierce winds. At the height of the herring industry there was plenty of food, even for the widowed families, but fishing was a dangerous occupation, especially for men who were used to working on the land.

 

The leader, preacher and doctor was John Sutherland (1789-1864), who was said to own the only watch in the village Sutherland was born at Ousdale to a tenant farmer before the clearances and had one brother, who died at Waterloo, and some sisters. His father died at an early age, Sutherland was left to raise his sisters on his own and, because of his family responsibilities, he never married. As the nearest church was some miles away, Sutherland, who was a pious man, opened his house to others on the Sabbath and preached to anyone who came. Sutherland, who was a gifted speaker, corresponded by letter with many members of the Church and became well known as the preacher "John Badbea", one of the most notable of the spiritual elite of the Caithness Church of Scotland who were known as "The Men" of Caithness.[8] He was said to have performed many public duties for the church and made many friends across Caithness and Sutherland. In June 1855, at the age of 66, he wrote to an admirer in Glasgow who occasionally sent him monetary gifts, saying: "...I long to hear of my friend’s widow, Mrs G. Keith. Did she arrive safe in New Zealand with her dear little ones? This is a weary and dreary wilderness. 'The mirth of the land is gone'. Everything is out of order..." Sutherland died at the age of 75 and was buried at Berriedale at a funeral attended by several hundred mourners, many of whom had travelled long distances to pay their last respects.

 

The last inhabitant left the village in 1911, and in that year David Sutherland, the son of the New Zealand emigrant, Alexander Robert Sutherland, erected a monument, built from the stones of John Sutherland's home, in memory of his father and the people of Badbea.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

Minus her rudders, Red/Yellow painted Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) De Havilland (Hawker-Siddeley) Sea Vixen D.3 XN652 at Flight Refueling's facility, Hurn Airport 22nd March 1984.

 

She was there with several other ex Royal Navy machines namely:

 

RAE 'Red/Yellow' D.3's XS577, XP924 and 'Red/Yellow/White' XS587 FAW.2/TT with appropriate, 'Black & Yellow' Target Tug stripes underneath.

 

Also RN marked FAW.2's XJ580/E, XJ602 and XN697/H54 were dotted around the old Navy's FRADU pans there.

 

All were part of the ill-fated Sea Vixen drone conversion programme which in the end was scrapped.

 

Of the above,

XP924 survived and is the only flying Sea Vixen and is billed to appear at this year's RNAS Yeovilton Air Show.

XS587 is with the Gatwick Aviation Museum and

XJ580 is with the Tangmere Aviation Museum.

XS577 was scrapped with the nose section surviving.

 

Image created from a very challenged 'stitch' of three scanned prints

  

How did a burly, middle-aged soldier become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? Was he playing Ignatius Loyola? Francis of Assisi? Paul of Tarsus? Not quite. The only saint who really cuts it as a cover-boy is St Sebastian, that curly-haired Roman youth shot with arrows on the orders of the emperor Diocletian. Sebastian's appeal to gay men seems obvious. He was young, male, apparently unmarried and martyred by the establishment. Unlike, say, St Augustine of Hippo, he also looks good in a loincloth and tied to a tree. And never was Sebastian more winsome than in the seven versions of him sculpted inside the choir of Saint-Maurice Church in Orschwiller..

What's going on? Well, Sebastian is living proof of the fact that if saints didn't exist, we would have to invent them. Thanks to the arrows, he's the one martyr in art everyone can spot. (Iconography is so unfair. Who now recognises St Stephen's stones or St Lawrence's griddle?) A twinky torso also helps. Yet, according to his hagiographer, Ambrose of Milan, Sebastian was a red-blooded captain in the Praetorian Guard, a centurion of middling years: he is the patron saint of soldiers and athletes, not hairdressers. Far from riling Diocletian by proselytising for same-sex love, he was killed for converting Romans to Christianity. And we all know where that led.

But there is worse. Not only was St Sebastian middle-aged and butch, he wasn't killed with arrows. Punctured, yes, but not killed. The perforated martyr was rescued from the stake and nursed back to health by St Irene of Rome – a woman, boys – before unwisely haranguing Diocletian for his paganism as he passed by on a litter. Unmoved by his tenacity, the emperor had Sebastian clubbed to death; his body was then dumped in Rome's sewers. Had history been less kind, he might have ended up as patron saint of poo.

How this would have affected his career as a gay coverboy we will never know. I can only recall one representation in art of St Sebastian thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, and that – by Reni's contemporary and fellow Bolognese, Lodovico Carracci – is safely tucked away in The Getty Center in Los Angeles. By contrast, there are more pictures of the arrow-filled Sebastian than there are of any other martyr I can think of, painted by everyone from Aleotti to Zick by way of Rubens, Botticelli, Titian and John Singer Sargent. The National Gallery alone has a dozen, including ones by Crivelli, Gerrit Honthorst and Luca Signorelli. And they're all of the same Sebastian, the one who ends up, eventually, on the cover of reFRESH: a paragon of male beauty, his toned body, prettily stuck with arrows, exposed to our gaze; the martyr described by Oscar Wilde – who, in French exile, took the alias "Sebastian Melmoth" – as "a lovely brown boy with crisp, clustering hair and red lips".

 

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/arr...

Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? It’s a way? But other wise you could have a nice understanding about arrows:

 

The five arrows are the five pillars to design the light inside your body and the pathways to immortal soul. Passed times, actually, future are realistic two other are united in the astral and are properties of auspicious answering from ancestors and reborn of consciousness.

The Promise Revealed .The arrow association with timeline is long and varied and much must wait for a more in depth recounting, but for now let us say he opened many doors for me and was a light on the inner and outer path towards knowledge and truth, love and the secrets of the universe.

My entire life has been filled with a calling and a longing. These longings and search for love and truth have been a blessing and a curse.I have always wanted to know who am I? Where did we come from?What is our purpose here? Why is there so much suffering and discord and anxiety on our planet? Why is the world so distorted and fractured,and so caught up in wars pollution ignorance superstition and fear?

   

Even as a small child I could see the answers to many of the worlds problems that were simple and easy fixes – if mankind would but realize the folly of his ways! It seems every question that was answered opened up 10 more. It seems I was never satisfied.

 

In my youth, I could really not understand why this planet was such a bloody mess. Once when I was pondering such questions as an 8-year-old, I asked my mother, Mom what is out there in outer space? Where does it go? When does it end? She replied: It never ends.

I nervously laughed, as if to deny the responsibility of accepting an infinite ever-expanding consciousness, and replied: It has to end somewhere. She laughed and saidWhere then? At a wall?

What is on other side?”

 

This really got me thinking, and I shook my head as I walked down the stairs to my own room, which was in the basement.

I got into bed and laid back. I fell into a melancholy reverie of infinite space. Into this otherwise dark room,I watched with interest as a small star maneuvered into the center of myone window. This Light, which I obviously now know to be my space family, had noticed my interest in deeper truths and proceeded to talk to me!

 

I had a short or long, I cannot remember to be honest, informational exchange on some deep and not so deep subjects. When I finally got to the question?

Well what is going to happen to planet earth? It surely cannot go on like this or we will most definitely destroy ourselves with they way things are going now, I was given an unexpected answer.

 

I was shown how eventually everything would come to a head and then at some point every one, or maybe not everyone, would be lifted off the planet and find themselves in giant space ships. Then they would be taken to other beautiful new and pristine planets to try and make a fresh start. For some reason, I felt I might be left behind.

 

Now how accurate my remembrances are, or exactly what this means, is open for debate. I only know that later in life while coming to grips with the fact that we are not alone in the universe and that I was being contacted by intelligent life from beyond our solar system, I remembered this telepathic exchange, and as far as I can recollect, this was my first contact.

 

My life was pretty normal for the most part and my deep hunger for truth and search for expanded awareness led me to Carlos Castanedas teachings and writings from Don Juan. These series of books were for me the key to growth and realizing myself as an infinite being of light.

 

I was enthralled and could not get enough of these books. I was more interested in the actual knowledge and the seemingly magical understandings of how we perceive and what really makes our reality as opposed to the Power plants that Don Juan gave to Carlos to help him to stop the world and to perceive a separate reality. The concepts Don Juan was expounding on were the basis of quantum Physics.

 

I was instinctively drawn to these understandings and somehow knew we make our own reality by our beliefs and where we place our attention. I was practicing the various secrets of gaining personal power and had some profound beyond belief type of happenings. Growing up in Laguna Beach where Timothy Leary lived, it wasnt long before I was having my own experiences with Power Plants, mushrooms and eventually LSD.

 

LAGUNA BEACH 100 Yards FROM MY CHILDHOOD OCEAN FRONT HOME

 

WHAT MY OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES FELT LIKE TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH SEMJASES SHIP

 

The details of these awakenings will be shared later, but for now suffice to say that I Saw my death, my will and realized myself as a Luminous being.

I realized that we are in essence, a luminous, nameless cluster of feelings that is held together by the binding force of life. I flew on the wings of my perception and learned how to shrink my tonal and even was visited by The Moth of Knowledge.

 

For some, these descriptions are metaphors, but for me these are real and accurate descriptions of the steps to becoming a man of knowledge and the path with heart. Seeing my auric egg was part and parcel of my spiritual awakening and my expanded perceptions of reality helped me to understand who we are and how we interact with the immensity of the infinite reality.

 

It was around this time at age 16 or so I was very interested in Psychic phenomenon and the developing of Siddhis or the powers of the mind. I developed a sort of obsession with pyramids in high school and was talking to a girl at school who upon hearing of my interest, proclaimed, I know the PYRAMID MAN.

 

 Pyramid Power in action!

 

13 - fred healing machine

 

Fred’s Front page of The National Examiner Article

 

He is holding his scale model of the X-1 healing machine and the design of a time machine / spaceship utilizing the interstellar conversion process

 

The pyramid man, really? I had to meet him and my first meeting was days later when I knocked on the door of Fred Bell. He was literally carrying in his very first run of 50 gold pyramids, which we would later share with the entire world.

 

I spent many hours and days and years of my life in close association with Fred Bell, who was my friend, teacher and benefactor and spiritual guide. We developed many healing technologies utilizing pyramids, crystals and lasers. The history of our association is long and varied and much must wait for a more in depth recounting, but for now let me say he opened many doors for me and was a light on the inner and outer path towards knowledge and truth, love and the secrets of the universe.

 

Our esoteric experiences and metaphysical alchemical journeys culminated in not only out-of-body experiences, which reached not only into the heart of the galaxy, but even unto the heart of creation itself.

 

These ineffable experiences transcend all logic and defy the intellect and spill out onto the floor of belief where only visionary mystics, impeccable warriors, saints and angels dare to tread. I must most likely be a visionary or a mystic because god knows I am no angel or saint. My flirtations with impeccability, if I dare to describe them as such, have been limited to very brief short bursts of accumulated personal power, which have enabled brief flights on the wings of my perception. I have touched infinity and knelt before the infinite light and worshiped the glory of God.

 

I am but a small speck of nothingness in the vastness of forever and God has made me whole and showed me the glory and the beauty of creation. I know from whence I came and I long to return to this divine source. I am ever on the path home gathering light and life immersed in the folly of men, ever seeking the truth far above and within my own self. This love and experience is so all powerful and consuming that my entire life is devoted to serving this ever living presence of love, life and light.

 

This eternal presence of perfection and ever expanding love, this primal relationship, this way of the eternal is right here before us and within us every step of the way. It is our souls right to follow the path of love home. On and on we must go with our inner and outer, our most innate self and awareness and consciousness as it is striving incessantly to realize this truth – this I AM .

 

Though many are blind to this reality for many reasons, the infinite light, the infinite love of creation waits within and without you hiding in plain sight throughout all of creation. There is no force, no power, no amount of hate, no tidal wave of fear, and no mountain of ignorance that can ever hold back this infinite being within you from realizing your self.

 

This is one aspect of the The Promise that I can Reveal as I try to share with you, to encourage you to make your way home. I can make a promise to you now. I know, I swear to you that one day, if you have not already realized it, that you too will share in this communion of love and the return of the spirit of truth in the very heart of your soul and you will one day share this through your life well lived, to every being throughout creation itself. We will stop all of the hate and all of the killing will stop. We will end the suffering and ignorance on this beautiful blue jewel floating in the immensity of God’s infinite light. We do have the power within us to bring Peace to this world.

  

The second part of The Promise is coming true before my eyes and is my lifelong calling. Today my hours of study, my intense searching for truth, my deep reflections and endless meditations are now allowing me to be of service to our beautiful planet. I have prepared and after many hard fought battles with my lower personality vehicle and accumulated scars, I now try to fly on scarred wings. Under Fred Bell’s watchful eye, after many years of leaving my body and going through various initiations of light body awareness, I was rewarded with several live contacts with my space family.

 

The first live contact was the culmination of a magical time with a member of the earths Resistance Movement. This was a military Special Forces brother who refused to work for the dark side and was rewarded with help from our space family. His name was Jim and I owe him a great debt of gratitude. He was sent to act as my teacher at Gabriel Greens house. The Ascended Master Hilarion, who is the Cohan of the 5th Ray of Concrete Science and Knowledge, sent Jim, who I consider my brother and teacher of light, to me.

 

He was instructed to teach me many things. In the course of my association, I was gifted with my first real open visit from Semjase. I was with Jim, Gabriel Green and Michael El Legion. I had a very emotional telepathic contact, which ended in me never having to see another space ship to know that they are real and there are very physical beings who ride in space ships made of matter and living light.

 

My second encounter with Semjase that I am allowed to remember is when I was with Fred in the living room of his house atop the Vortex in Laguna Beach. I was lying on the floor and the next moment I was standing inside a space ship. Many wonderful things and many amazing revelations were shared with me. And in the morning, I was returned to adifferent location in his living room with Fred by my side. You are the master now, he exclaimed. I could only watch in frustration as right before my eyes most of my experiences were erased from my mind. I had all the memories before me and I watched helpless to stop the eraser that slowly step-by-step removed almost all of my experience. I managed to keep one major memory and this is what I have held onto for all of my life. All that remains of the most amazing day of my entire life is my remembrance of The Promise.

THE MINI ALL SPARK IN ACTION

I made a promise to Semjase before I left the ship on the teleportation beam and I am fulfilling part of that promise by sharing with you here on this site my most intimate and personal struggles and victories of the light in my life and as I have witnessed them on the surface of the planet and in my personal life.

I promised to her that one day I would create a show, a party of love to honor the Galactic Federation of Light. This event would share the wonderful healing technologies of light color and sound that were part of my own individual awakening process. I promised to her that I would do my best to help people overcome the darkness on this planet by unifying them into a purpose and a mission to heal themselves and the planet herself. I would teach others that by invoking love and light into their beings they could realize that by entering into the silence they too can realize the living presence of God within themselves.

This picture below is of one of our Major Portal Vortexes we created in Fred’s living room! We utilized the laser light crystal sound color technology in conjunction with Pyramids. We amplified and accelerated these fields with the violet flame-tesla coils to achieve our own artificial time warp zones! These vortexes were actually accelerated Scalar field ;Event horizons that we used in the alchemical transfiguration of ourselves in activations designed to heal the timelines ourselves and the planet herself through interaction with the grid lines or vortex portals, which were accessed through the mineral kingdom and the vortexes of our own Christ Consciousness or I AM Presence.

 

Some of The Main Components of A Promise Pyramid System

I also promised that I would gather people in a large group or groups in a concerted effort to send this light into the heart of the mother herself. I was shown how this could change the world. I do not know if this is in an instant or if this is even a possibility. I do know that I have faith that this is true. I have prayed with all my heart and being and have thought of nothing else and never wanted anything more than to serve the light by fulfilling this promise and for me this is what I must do. I bare my soul to you, the world, and reveal this Promise.

 

The Promise being fulfilled at the funerary Temple in Egypt

From the source of all that is good, beautiful and true, I pray that I am successful and that my effort will bear fruit and hasten the day of the return of love and light to the world of men and upon our world. I know whether I am successful or not, that love is already here inside my heart and yours, and one day very soon this love will spread like a fire and envelope the entire world and be evident in the very nature of our reality, and we will once again be home. Living in harmony with nature and each other is not so hard to do.It is for this dream, this promise I am here to serve.

May the kingdom come quickly

Rob Potter

Hiranoya is an old establishment, being said in business for around 400 years now and selling sweetfish (ayu) and tea. It even has a shrine gate thanks to an old connection with the Otagi Shrine.

  

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Former Howard Johnson's Restaurant located at 7590 Clayton Rd. in Richmond Heights,MO. The franchisee of this location ceased their affiliation with HJ in 1985 and renamed their establishment Layton's Restaurant. The Giessow family had operated this HJ location since 1959 up until their retirement on June 30th 2004. The Giessow's kept this property remarkably intact and retained numerous holdovers from HoJo's up until the day the closed the restaurant. The orange roof was removed in the late 1980s and the exterior was slightly altered soon thereafter. The interior of the restaurant retained numerous original fixtures dating back to when the restaurant opened for business back in 1955! I had a talk with a landscaper working on the property who said there has been a bitter family dispute over the land where the once successful restaurant is located. He stated that his company comes by every week to keep the property maintained and that the parking lot was repaved in 2017 yet the restaurant is still vacant. It is remarkable and somewhat eerie to see such an intact HJ property sitting empty yet fully intact with the daily specials still written on a whiteboard and even a few original HJ Ice Cream dishes on the dairy bar!

Proposals for a university in Queensland began in the 1870s. A Royal Commission in 1874, chaired by Sir Charles Lilley, recommended the immediate establishment of a university. Those against a university argued that technical rather than academic education was more important in an economy dominated by primary industry. Those in favour of the university, in the face of this opposition, distanced themselves from Oxford and Cambridge and proposed instead a model derived from the mid-western states of the USA. A second Royal Commission in 1891 recommended the inclusion of five faculties in a new university; Arts, Law, Medicine, Science and Applied Science. Education generally was given a low priority in Queensland's budgets, and in a colony with a literacy rate of 57% in 1861, primary education was the first concern well ahead of secondary and technical education. The government, despite the findings of the Royal Commissions, was unwilling to commit funds to the establishment of a university.

 

In 1893 the Queensland University Extension Movement was begun by a group of private individuals who organised public lecture courses in adult education, hoping to excite wider community support for a university in Queensland. In 1894, 245 students were enrolled in the extension classes and the lectures were described as practical and useful. In 1906 the University Extension Movement staged the University Congress, a forum for interested delegates to promote the idea of a university. Opinion was mobilised, a fund was started, and a draft Bill for a Queensland University was prepared. Stress was laid on the practical aspects of university education and its importance for the commerce of Queensland. The proceedings of the Congress were forwarded to Premier Kidston. In October 1906, sixty acres in Victoria Park were gazetted for university purposes.

 

The University of Queensland was established by an Act of State Parliament on the 10th of December 1909 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Queensland's separation from the colony of New South Wales. The Act allowed for the university to be governed by a senate of 20 men and Sir William MacGregor, the incoming Governor, was appointed the first chancellor with RH Roe as the vice chancellor. Old Government House in George Street was set aside for the University following the departure of the Governor to the Bardon residence, Fernberg, sparking the first debates about the best location for the university.

 

In 1910 the first teaching faculties were created. These included Engineering, Classics, Mathematics, and Chemistry. In December of the same year, the Senate appointed the first four professors; BD Steele in chemistry, JL Michie in classics, H. Priestly in mathematics and A Gibson in engineering. In 1911 the first students enrolled.

 

Practically from the start there was controversy about a permanent site for the University. Old Government House was too small and was seen by many as evidence merely of government parsimony. There was not much room for expansion and there were conflicts with the neighbouring Brisbane Central Technical College. Victoria Park had been chosen in 1906 for a permanent site and in 1922 a further 170 acres were vested in the University. The high cost of preparing the steeply sloping land at Victoria Park for building made it a less than ideal site despite its central location and proximity to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Yeronga Park and Saint Lucia were considered as options. But in 1926 the whole issue was transformed when Doctor James O'Neil Mayne and Miss Mary Emilia Mayne made £50,000 available to the Brisbane City Council to resume land at Saint Lucia and present it to the University. Opinion was divided with Professor Steele and many members of the medical profession against Saint Lucia because of its isolation and lack of public transport. A meeting of the Senate, on the 10th of December, voted for the Saint Lucia site on the condition that the city council provided access. Those voting for Saint Lucia included Archbishop Duhig, EJD Stanley, ACV Melbourne, and Professor Richards. Doctor Lockhart Gibson, Chancellor AJ Thynne and Archbishop Sharp were amongst those who voted for Victoria Park. In 1930 the Senate handed over Victoria Park, less eleven acres reserved for a medical school, to the Brisbane City Council in exchange for the Saint Lucia site.

 

During the years of the Depression that followed the university suffered progressive reduction of government funding. Cuts were made to both staff salaries and numbers, while student numbers trebled between 1923 and 1933. There was no prospect of building the new university until 1935 when the Premier, W. Forgan Smith, announced that the Queensland Government would undertake construction at Saint Lucia. This was one of the three major development projects initiated in the mid 1930s by the Queensland government to create employment, the others being the Stanley River Dam and the Story Bridge. The University Senate called for and received schemes from various enthusiasts, including Professor Hawken, Dr FW Robinson, AB Leven, and Dr JJC Bradfield. Taking ideas from these suggestions the Senate committee produced its own preliminary design. The principle building, containing Arts, Law and administration, was E-shaped and enclosed one side of an arcaded quadrangle. Related outer buildings contained Engineering, Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, a museum and a teachers' training college. The Queensland government, despite hopes for a competition, appointed the Sydney firm of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co as architects for the project; and Jack Francis Hennessy (1887 - 1955) produced the coherent and logical plan that still lies at the heart of the University.

 

The foundation stone was laid in 1937 by Forgan Smith but it was another year before building commenced. Construction began in March 1938 with the main building, now known as the Forgan Smith Building, and was followed shortly afterward with the lower floors of the library and the Chemistry Building. It was to proceed, due to financial constraints, in stages clockwise around the court.

 

Work was disrupted by the Second World War (WWII). The main building served its first use, from 1942 - 1944, as the headquarters of General Sir Thomas Blamey (head of the Australian Defence Forces). The army evacuated the building and work re-commenced by 1948. The Forgan Smith Building was officially opened in May 1949 by Premier Hanlon. The Duhig Library (two-stories only and named for Archbishop Sir James Duhig) was also ready by this time, as was the Steele Building (named for the first professor of chemistry, Professor Bertram Steele).

 

In 1951 the Richards Building (named for the first professor of geology, Henry Casselli Richards) was completed. In 1955 the Parnell Building (named for the inaugural professor of physics, Thomas Parnell) and an addition to the west wing of the Forgan Smith Building were completed. In 1962, jointly funded by State and Commonwealth Governments, the Goddard Building (named for the second professor of biology, Ernest Jones Goddard) was completed. In 1965 three extra floors were added to the Duhig Library to the design of James Birrell.

 

The final building at the western end of the Forgan Smith was to have been a Great Hall. JD Story, the vice chancellor from 1938 until 1960, proposed in 1959 that this be replaced by a western Arts building and in 1972 construction began on the Michie Building (named for first the professor of classics, J.L. Michie). The state government announced in 1974 that it would provide the funding to clad the building in sandstone. The Michie Building was completed in 1978.

 

In March 1979 the colonnade between the Michie Building and the Goddard Building was completed enclosing the Great Court Complex.

 

A number of changes have been made over the years to the Great Court Complex. Some of buildings have been augmented or altered: there are various structures on top of the Goddard Building, and a new, discreet addition to the Law Library at the western end of the Forgan Smith Building which was designed by Robert Riddell. Perhaps the most significant change is that the planting within the Court is less formal than originally intended, and takes little account of Hennessy's plans for strong visual axes to tie the whole Court together. Notable also in this respect are Professor Gareth Robert's master plan for the university which involved the closing of the circular drive and the placement of the Main Library and the Great Hall in front of the Forgan Smith Building.

 

The Sculptors:

 

As part of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co's original concept, it was intended that the Great Court would include extensive sculptural work portraying historical panels, statues, coats of arms and panels of Australian plant and animal life. Many of the designs were done by Leo Drinan, who was the principle architect with Hennessy, Hennessy & Co. Work on the sculptures began in 1939, with German born John Theodore Muller and Frederick James McGowan as the principle stonemasons. Work was halted by the war in 1942 and McGowan died before it resumed three years later. Muller continued to carve until his death at more than 80 years of age, in 1953. At the time of his death, all of the friezes, most of the statues, and half of the grotesques, coats of arms, arches and roundels were completed.

 

Carving virtually stopped at the University after Muller's death and resumed only after the Michie Building was under construction. A competition amongst several Queensland sculptors in 1976 led to the commissioning of Mrs Rhyl Hinwood. Mrs Hinwood has since continued to carve numerous grotesques and coats of arms for the Court, as well as the two monumental figures at the main entrance to the Goddard Building.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Alexander De Croo, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Cooperation, the Digital Agenda, Telecommunications and Postal Services of Belgium and Mercedes Aráoz, Prime Minister of Peru speaking during the Session "Post-Establishment Politics? " at the Annual Meeting 2018 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 23, 2018

Copyright by World Economic Forum / Greg Beadle

Coria was a fort and town 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Hadrian's Wall, in the Roman province of Britannia at a point where a big Roman north–south road (Dere Street) bridged the River Tyne and met another Roman road (Stanegate), which ran east–west between Coria and Luguvalium (the modern Carlisle) in the Solway Plain. The full Latin name is uncertain. In English, it is known as Corchester or Corbridge Roman Site as it sits on the edge of the village of Corbridge in the English county of Northumberland. It is in the guardianship of English Heritage and is partially exposed as a visitor attraction, including a site museum.

 

The place-name appears in contemporary records as Corstopitum and Corie Lopocarium. These forms are generally recognised as corrupt. Suggested reconstructions include Coriosopitum, Corsopitum or Corsobetum. The Vindolanda tablets show that it was locally referred to by the simple form, Coria, the name for a local tribal centre. The suffix ought to represent the name of the local tribe, a member of the Brigantian confederation but its correct form is unknown. It gave its name to Corbridge, albeit by processes which are debated.

 

There is evidence of Iron Age round houses on the site but the first Romans in the area built the Red House Fort, 0.5 mi (0.80 km) to the west, as a supply camp for Agricola's campaigns.

 

Soon after Roman victories in modern Scotland, around AD 84, a new fort was built on the site with turf ramparts and timber gates. Barrack blocks surrounded a headquarters building, a commander's residence, administrative staff accommodation, workshops and granaries. It was probably occupied by a 500-strong cavalry unit called the Ala Gallorum Petriana but burnt down in AD 105. A second timber fort was built, guarding an important crossing of the River Tyne, when the Solway Firth–Tyne divide was the Roman frontier. Around AD 120, when Hadrian's Wall was built just over two miles to the north, the fort was rebuilt again, probably to house infantry away from the Wall. About twenty years later, when the frontier was pushed further north and the Antonine Wall built, the first stone fort was erected under the Governor Quintus Lollius Urbicus.

 

English Heritage has released monographs on the forts along Hadrian's Wall through the Archaeology Data Service. Bishop and Dore's report on the excavations at Corbridge 1947–80 reveal the complex history of the sequence of mainly earth and timber forts which preceded the masonry buildings. The reports also cover a metal hoard found within the fort, possibly linked to the abandonment between AD 122 and 138

 

After the Romans fell back to Hadrian's Wall in AD 163, the army seems to have been largely removed from Coria. Its ramparts were levelled and a big rebuilding programme of a very different nature was instigated. A series of probable temples were erected, followed by granaries, a fountain house and a large courtyard complex, which may have been intended to become a civilian forum or a military storehouse and workshop establishment. It was never finished in its original plan.

 

Burnt timber buildings may relate to Cassius Dio's reference to tribes crossing the frontier but by the early 3rd century there was more construction. Two compounds opposite the supposed forum were built as part of a military supply depot within the town. It was connected with the Second and the Sixth Legion and may have been part of the supply network for Septimius Severus' northern campaigns.

 

Information on the 3rd- and 4th-century town is lacking but an elaborate house was certainly put up which may have housed an Imperial official. Coria was probably a big market centre for the lead, iron and coal industries in the area, as well as agriculture, evidenced by the granaries. A pottery store has also been identified. When occupation came to an end is unclear. It is not even known if the site was still occupied when the Anglo-Saxons arrived to found adjoining Corbridge.

 

The Corbridge Hoard was found here.

 

Between 1906 and 1914, the site was excavated following a desire by the Northumberland County History Committee to assess the Roman remains at Corbridge ahead of a book on the history of the parish, overseen by Francis J. Haverfield. During that time, a number of scholars from Oxford University were sent by Haverfield to supervise local labourers tasked with the actual excavation, including J.P. Bushe-Fox and Leonard Woolley, making it one of the first training excavations in British archaeology. Brian Dobson later ran adult training excavations at Corbridge in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Work on Hexham Abbey in 1881 brought to light a Roman funerary monument in the stonework of the south porch of the transept. An elaborately carved stone (now on display in the abbey) shows a standard-bearer in the Roman cavalry riding down a barbarian: its inscription shows it to commemorate Flavinus, an officer in the ala Petriana who died aged 25 after seven years' service. The ala Petriana is known to have been stationed at Corbridge, and the slab is thought to date to the late first century and to have once stood in the military cemetery near the fort there.

 

Roman Britain was the territory that became the Roman province of Britannia after the Roman conquest of Britain, consisting of a large part of the island of Great Britain. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410.

 

Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 and 54 BC as part of his Gallic Wars. According to Caesar, the Britons had been overrun or culturally assimilated by the Belgae during the British Iron Age and had been aiding Caesar's enemies. The Belgae were the only Celtic tribe to cross the sea into Britain, for to all other Celtic tribes this land was unknown. He received tribute, installed the friendly king Mandubracius over the Trinovantes, and returned to Gaul. Planned invasions under Augustus were called off in 34, 27, and 25 BC. In 40 AD, Caligula assembled 200,000 men at the Channel on the continent, only to have them gather seashells (musculi) according to Suetonius, perhaps as a symbolic gesture to proclaim Caligula's victory over the sea. Three years later, Claudius directed four legions to invade Britain and restore the exiled king Verica over the Atrebates. The Romans defeated the Catuvellauni, and then organized their conquests as the province of Britain. By 47 AD, the Romans held the lands southeast of the Fosse Way. Control over Wales was delayed by reverses and the effects of Boudica's uprising, but the Romans expanded steadily northward.

 

The conquest of Britain continued under command of Gnaeus Julius Agricola (77–84), who expanded the Roman Empire as far as Caledonia. In mid-84 AD, Agricola faced the armies of the Caledonians, led by Calgacus, at the Battle of Mons Graupius. Battle casualties were estimated by Tacitus to be upwards of 10,000 on the Caledonian side and about 360 on the Roman side. The bloodbath at Mons Graupius concluded the forty-year conquest of Britain, a period that possibly saw between 100,000 and 250,000 Britons killed. In the context of pre-industrial warfare and of a total population of Britain of c. 2 million, these are very high figures.

 

Under the 2nd-century emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, two walls were built to defend the Roman province from the Caledonians, whose realms in the Scottish Highlands were never controlled. Around 197 AD, the Severan Reforms divided Britain into two provinces: Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. During the Diocletian Reforms, at the end of the 3rd century, Britannia was divided into four provinces under the direction of a vicarius, who administered the Diocese of the Britains. A fifth province, Valentia, is attested in the later 4th century. For much of the later period of the Roman occupation, Britannia was subject to barbarian invasions and often came under the control of imperial usurpers and imperial pretenders. The final Roman withdrawal from Britain occurred around 410; the native kingdoms are considered to have formed Sub-Roman Britain after that.

 

Following the conquest of the Britons, a distinctive Romano-British culture emerged as the Romans introduced improved agriculture, urban planning, industrial production, and architecture. The Roman goddess Britannia became the female personification of Britain. After the initial invasions, Roman historians generally only mention Britain in passing. Thus, most present knowledge derives from archaeological investigations and occasional epigraphic evidence lauding the Britannic achievements of an emperor. Roman citizens settled in Britain from many parts of the Empire.

 

History

Britain was known to the Classical world. The Greeks, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin in the 4th century BC. The Greeks referred to the Cassiterides, or "tin islands", and placed them near the west coast of Europe. The Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 6th or 5th century BC and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th. It was regarded as a place of mystery, with some writers refusing to believe it existed.

 

The first direct Roman contact was when Julius Caesar undertook two expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, as part of his conquest of Gaul, believing the Britons were helping the Gallic resistance. The first expedition was more a reconnaissance than a full invasion and gained a foothold on the coast of Kent but was unable to advance further because of storm damage to the ships and a lack of cavalry. Despite the military failure, it was a political success, with the Roman Senate declaring a 20-day public holiday in Rome to honour the unprecedented achievement of obtaining hostages from Britain and defeating Belgic tribes on returning to the continent.

 

The second invasion involved a substantially larger force and Caesar coerced or invited many of the native Celtic tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for peace. A friendly local king, Mandubracius, was installed, and his rival, Cassivellaunus, was brought to terms. Hostages were taken, but historians disagree over whether any tribute was paid after Caesar returned to Gaul.

 

Caesar conquered no territory and left no troops behind, but he established clients and brought Britain into Rome's sphere of influence. Augustus planned invasions in 34, 27 and 25 BC, but circumstances were never favourable, and the relationship between Britain and Rome settled into one of diplomacy and trade. Strabo, writing late in Augustus's reign, claimed that taxes on trade brought in more annual revenue than any conquest could. Archaeology shows that there was an increase in imported luxury goods in southeastern Britain. Strabo also mentions British kings who sent embassies to Augustus, and Augustus's own Res Gestae refers to two British kings he received as refugees. When some of Tiberius's ships were carried to Britain in a storm during his campaigns in Germany in 16 AD, they came back with tales of monsters.

 

Rome appears to have encouraged a balance of power in southern Britain, supporting two powerful kingdoms: the Catuvellauni, ruled by the descendants of Tasciovanus, and the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Commius. This policy was followed until 39 or 40 AD, when Caligula received an exiled member of the Catuvellaunian dynasty and planned an invasion of Britain that collapsed in farcical circumstances before it left Gaul. When Claudius successfully invaded in 43 AD, it was in aid of another fugitive British ruler, Verica of the Atrebates.

 

Roman invasion

The invasion force in 43 AD was led by Aulus Plautius,[26] but it is unclear how many legions were sent. The Legio II Augusta, commanded by future emperor Vespasian, was the only one directly attested to have taken part. The Legio IX Hispana, the XIV Gemina (later styled Martia Victrix) and the XX (later styled Valeria Victrix) are known to have served during the Boudican Revolt of 60/61, and were probably there since the initial invasion. This is not certain because the Roman army was flexible, with units being moved around whenever necessary. The IX Hispana may have been permanently stationed, with records showing it at Eboracum (York) in 71 and on a building inscription there dated 108, before being destroyed in the east of the Empire, possibly during the Bar Kokhba revolt.

 

The invasion was delayed by a troop mutiny until an imperial freedman persuaded them to overcome their fear of crossing the Ocean and campaigning beyond the limits of the known world. They sailed in three divisions, and probably landed at Richborough in Kent; at least part of the force may have landed near Fishbourne, West Sussex.

 

The Catuvellauni and their allies were defeated in two battles: the first, assuming a Richborough landing, on the river Medway, the second on the river Thames. One of their leaders, Togodumnus, was killed, but his brother Caratacus survived to continue resistance elsewhere. Plautius halted at the Thames and sent for Claudius, who arrived with reinforcements, including artillery and elephants, for the final march to the Catuvellaunian capital, Camulodunum (Colchester). Vespasian subdued the southwest, Cogidubnus was set up as a friendly king of several territories, and treaties were made with tribes outside direct Roman control.

 

Establishment of Roman rule

After capturing the south of the island, the Romans turned their attention to what is now Wales. The Silures, Ordovices and Deceangli remained implacably opposed to the invaders and for the first few decades were the focus of Roman military attention, despite occasional minor revolts among Roman allies like the Brigantes and the Iceni. The Silures were led by Caratacus, and he carried out an effective guerrilla campaign against Governor Publius Ostorius Scapula. Finally, in 51, Ostorius lured Caratacus into a set-piece battle and defeated him. The British leader sought refuge among the Brigantes, but their queen, Cartimandua, proved her loyalty by surrendering him to the Romans. He was brought as a captive to Rome, where a dignified speech he made during Claudius's triumph persuaded the emperor to spare his life. The Silures were still not pacified, and Cartimandua's ex-husband Venutius replaced Caratacus as the most prominent leader of British resistance.

 

On Nero's accession, Roman Britain extended as far north as Lindum. Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the conqueror of Mauretania (modern day Algeria and Morocco), then became governor of Britain, and in 60 and 61 he moved against Mona (Anglesey) to settle accounts with Druidism once and for all. Paulinus led his army across the Menai Strait and massacred the Druids and burnt their sacred groves.

 

While Paulinus was campaigning in Mona, the southeast of Britain rose in revolt under the leadership of Boudica. She was the widow of the recently deceased king of the Iceni, Prasutagus. The Roman historian Tacitus reports that Prasutagus had left a will leaving half his kingdom to Nero in the hope that the remainder would be left untouched. He was wrong. When his will was enforced, Rome[clarification needed] responded by violently seizing the tribe's lands in full. Boudica protested. In consequence, Rome[clarification needed] punished her and her daughters by flogging and rape. In response, the Iceni, joined by the Trinovantes, destroyed the Roman colony at Camulodunum (Colchester) and routed the part of the IXth Legion that was sent to relieve it. Paulinus rode to London (then called Londinium), the rebels' next target, but concluded it could not be defended. Abandoned, it was destroyed, as was Verulamium (St. Albans). Between seventy and eighty thousand people are said to have been killed in the three cities. But Paulinus regrouped with two of the three legions still available to him, chose a battlefield, and, despite being outnumbered by more than twenty to one, defeated the rebels in the Battle of Watling Street. Boudica died not long afterwards, by self-administered poison or by illness. During this time, the Emperor Nero considered withdrawing Roman forces from Britain altogether.

 

There was further turmoil in 69, the "Year of the Four Emperors". As civil war raged in Rome, weak governors were unable to control the legions in Britain, and Venutius of the Brigantes seized his chance. The Romans had previously defended Cartimandua against him, but this time were unable to do so. Cartimandua was evacuated, and Venutius was left in control of the north of the country. After Vespasian secured the empire, his first two appointments as governor, Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Sextus Julius Frontinus, took on the task of subduing the Brigantes and Silures respectively.[38] Frontinus extended Roman rule to all of South Wales, and initiated exploitation of the mineral resources, such as the gold mines at Dolaucothi.

 

In the following years, the Romans conquered more of the island, increasing the size of Roman Britain. Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, father-in-law to the historian Tacitus, conquered the Ordovices in 78. With the XX Valeria Victrix legion, Agricola defeated the Caledonians in 84 at the Battle of Mons Graupius, in north-east Scotland. This was the high-water mark of Roman territory in Britain: shortly after his victory, Agricola was recalled from Britain back to Rome, and the Romans initially retired to a more defensible line along the Forth–Clyde isthmus, freeing soldiers badly needed along other frontiers.

 

For much of the history of Roman Britain, a large number of soldiers were garrisoned on the island. This required that the emperor station a trusted senior man as governor of the province. As a result, many future emperors served as governors or legates in this province, including Vespasian, Pertinax, and Gordian I.

 

Roman military organisation in the north

In 84 AD

In 84 AD

 

In 155 AD

In 155 AD

 

Hadrian's Wall, and Antonine Wall

There is no historical source describing the decades that followed Agricola's recall. Even the name of his replacement is unknown. Archaeology has shown that some Roman forts south of the Forth–Clyde isthmus were rebuilt and enlarged; others appear to have been abandoned. By 87 the frontier had been consolidated on the Stanegate. Roman coins and pottery have been found circulating at native settlement sites in the Scottish Lowlands in the years before 100, indicating growing Romanisation. Some of the most important sources for this era are the writing tablets from the fort at Vindolanda in Northumberland, mostly dating to 90–110. These tablets provide evidence for the operation of a Roman fort at the edge of the Roman Empire, where officers' wives maintained polite society while merchants, hauliers and military personnel kept the fort operational and supplied.

 

Around 105 there appears to have been a serious setback at the hands of the tribes of the Picts: several Roman forts were destroyed by fire, with human remains and damaged armour at Trimontium (at modern Newstead, in SE Scotland) indicating hostilities at least at that site.[citation needed] There is also circumstantial evidence that auxiliary reinforcements were sent from Germany, and an unnamed British war of the period is mentioned on the gravestone of a tribune of Cyrene. Trajan's Dacian Wars may have led to troop reductions in the area or even total withdrawal followed by slighting of the forts by the Picts rather than an unrecorded military defeat. The Romans were also in the habit of destroying their own forts during an orderly withdrawal, in order to deny resources to an enemy. In either case, the frontier probably moved south to the line of the Stanegate at the Solway–Tyne isthmus around this time.

 

A new crisis occurred at the beginning of Hadrian's reign): a rising in the north which was suppressed by Quintus Pompeius Falco. When Hadrian reached Britannia on his famous tour of the Roman provinces around 120, he directed an extensive defensive wall, known to posterity as Hadrian's Wall, to be built close to the line of the Stanegate frontier. Hadrian appointed Aulus Platorius Nepos as governor to undertake this work who brought the Legio VI Victrix legion with him from Germania Inferior. This replaced the famous Legio IX Hispana, whose disappearance has been much discussed. Archaeology indicates considerable political instability in Scotland during the first half of the 2nd century, and the shifting frontier at this time should be seen in this context.

 

In the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161) the Hadrianic border was briefly extended north to the Forth–Clyde isthmus, where the Antonine Wall was built around 142 following the military reoccupation of the Scottish lowlands by a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus.

 

The first Antonine occupation of Scotland ended as a result of a further crisis in 155–157, when the Brigantes revolted. With limited options to despatch reinforcements, the Romans moved their troops south, and this rising was suppressed by Governor Gnaeus Julius Verus. Within a year the Antonine Wall was recaptured, but by 163 or 164 it was abandoned. The second occupation was probably connected with Antoninus's undertakings to protect the Votadini or his pride in enlarging the empire, since the retreat to the Hadrianic frontier occurred not long after his death when a more objective strategic assessment of the benefits of the Antonine Wall could be made. The Romans did not entirely withdraw from Scotland at this time: the large fort at Newstead was maintained along with seven smaller outposts until at least 180.

 

During the twenty-year period following the reversion of the frontier to Hadrian's Wall in 163/4, Rome was concerned with continental issues, primarily problems in the Danubian provinces. Increasing numbers of hoards of buried coins in Britain at this time indicate that peace was not entirely achieved. Sufficient Roman silver has been found in Scotland to suggest more than ordinary trade, and it is likely that the Romans were reinforcing treaty agreements by paying tribute to their implacable enemies, the Picts.

 

In 175, a large force of Sarmatian cavalry, consisting of 5,500 men, arrived in Britannia, probably to reinforce troops fighting unrecorded uprisings. In 180, Hadrian's Wall was breached by the Picts and the commanding officer or governor was killed there in what Cassius Dio described as the most serious war of the reign of Commodus. Ulpius Marcellus was sent as replacement governor and by 184 he had won a new peace, only to be faced with a mutiny from his own troops. Unhappy with Marcellus's strictness, they tried to elect a legate named Priscus as usurper governor; he refused, but Marcellus was lucky to leave the province alive. The Roman army in Britannia continued its insubordination: they sent a delegation of 1,500 to Rome to demand the execution of Tigidius Perennis, a Praetorian prefect who they felt had earlier wronged them by posting lowly equites to legate ranks in Britannia. Commodus met the party outside Rome and agreed to have Perennis killed, but this only made them feel more secure in their mutiny.

 

The future emperor Pertinax (lived 126–193) was sent to Britannia to quell the mutiny and was initially successful in regaining control, but a riot broke out among the troops. Pertinax was attacked and left for dead, and asked to be recalled to Rome, where he briefly succeeded Commodus as emperor in 192.

 

3rd century

The death of Commodus put into motion a series of events which eventually led to civil war. Following the short reign of Pertinax, several rivals for the emperorship emerged, including Septimius Severus and Clodius Albinus. The latter was the new governor of Britannia, and had seemingly won the natives over after their earlier rebellions; he also controlled three legions, making him a potentially significant claimant. His sometime rival Severus promised him the title of Caesar in return for Albinus's support against Pescennius Niger in the east. Once Niger was neutralised, Severus turned on his ally in Britannia; it is likely that Albinus saw he would be the next target and was already preparing for war.

 

Albinus crossed to Gaul in 195, where the provinces were also sympathetic to him, and set up at Lugdunum. Severus arrived in February 196, and the ensuing battle was decisive. Albinus came close to victory, but Severus's reinforcements won the day, and the British governor committed suicide. Severus soon purged Albinus's sympathisers and perhaps confiscated large tracts of land in Britain as punishment. Albinus had demonstrated the major problem posed by Roman Britain. In order to maintain security, the province required the presence of three legions, but command of these forces provided an ideal power base for ambitious rivals. Deploying those legions elsewhere would strip the island of its garrison, leaving the province defenceless against uprisings by the native Celtic tribes and against invasion by the Picts and Scots.

 

The traditional view is that northern Britain descended into anarchy during Albinus's absence. Cassius Dio records that the new Governor, Virius Lupus, was obliged to buy peace from a fractious northern tribe known as the Maeatae. The succession of militarily distinguished governors who were subsequently appointed suggests that enemies of Rome were posing a difficult challenge, and Lucius Alfenus Senecio's report to Rome in 207 describes barbarians "rebelling, over-running the land, taking loot and creating destruction". In order to rebel, of course, one must be a subject – the Maeatae clearly did not consider themselves such. Senecio requested either reinforcements or an Imperial expedition, and Severus chose the latter, despite being 62 years old. Archaeological evidence shows that Senecio had been rebuilding the defences of Hadrian's Wall and the forts beyond it, and Severus's arrival in Britain prompted the enemy tribes to sue for peace immediately. The emperor had not come all that way to leave without a victory, and it is likely that he wished to provide his teenage sons Caracalla and Geta with first-hand experience of controlling a hostile barbarian land.

 

Northern campaigns, 208–211

An invasion of Caledonia led by Severus and probably numbering around 20,000 troops moved north in 208 or 209, crossing the Wall and passing through eastern Scotland on a route similar to that used by Agricola. Harried by punishing guerrilla raids by the northern tribes and slowed by an unforgiving terrain, Severus was unable to meet the Caledonians on a battlefield. The emperor's forces pushed north as far as the River Tay, but little appears to have been achieved by the invasion, as peace treaties were signed with the Caledonians. By 210 Severus had returned to York, and the frontier had once again become Hadrian's Wall. He assumed the title Britannicus but the title meant little with regard to the unconquered north, which clearly remained outside the authority of the Empire. Almost immediately, another northern tribe, the Maeatae, went to war. Caracalla left with a punitive expedition, but by the following year his ailing father had died and he and his brother left the province to press their claim to the throne.

 

As one of his last acts, Severus tried to solve the problem of powerful and rebellious governors in Britain by dividing the province into Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. This kept the potential for rebellion in check for almost a century. Historical sources provide little information on the following decades, a period known as the Long Peace. Even so, the number of buried hoards found from this period rises, suggesting continuing unrest. A string of forts were built along the coast of southern Britain to control piracy; and over the following hundred years they increased in number, becoming the Saxon Shore Forts.

 

During the middle of the 3rd century, the Roman Empire was convulsed by barbarian invasions, rebellions and new imperial pretenders. Britannia apparently avoided these troubles, but increasing inflation had its economic effect. In 259 a so-called Gallic Empire was established when Postumus rebelled against Gallienus. Britannia was part of this until 274 when Aurelian reunited the empire.

 

Around the year 280, a half-British officer named Bonosus was in command of the Roman's Rhenish fleet when the Germans managed to burn it at anchor. To avoid punishment, he proclaimed himself emperor at Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) but was crushed by Marcus Aurelius Probus. Soon afterwards, an unnamed governor of one of the British provinces also attempted an uprising. Probus put it down by sending irregular troops of Vandals and Burgundians across the Channel.

 

The Carausian Revolt led to a short-lived Britannic Empire from 286 to 296. Carausius was a Menapian naval commander of the Britannic fleet; he revolted upon learning of a death sentence ordered by the emperor Maximian on charges of having abetted Frankish and Saxon pirates and having embezzled recovered treasure. He consolidated control over all the provinces of Britain and some of northern Gaul while Maximian dealt with other uprisings. An invasion in 288 failed to unseat him and an uneasy peace ensued, with Carausius issuing coins and inviting official recognition. In 293, the junior emperor Constantius Chlorus launched a second offensive, besieging the rebel port of Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer) by land and sea. After it fell, Constantius attacked Carausius's other Gallic holdings and Frankish allies and Carausius was usurped by his treasurer, Allectus. Julius Asclepiodotus landed an invasion fleet near Southampton and defeated Allectus in a land battle.

 

Diocletian's reforms

As part of Diocletian's reforms, the provinces of Roman Britain were organized as a diocese governed by a vicarius under a praetorian prefect who, from 318 to 331, was Junius Bassus who was based at Augusta Treverorum (Trier).

 

The vicarius was based at Londinium as the principal city of the diocese. Londinium and Eboracum continued as provincial capitals and the territory was divided up into smaller provinces for administrative efficiency.

 

Civilian and military authority of a province was no longer exercised by one official and the governor was stripped of military command which was handed over to the Dux Britanniarum by 314. The governor of a province assumed more financial duties (the procurators of the Treasury ministry were slowly phased out in the first three decades of the 4th century). The Dux was commander of the troops of the Northern Region, primarily along Hadrian's Wall and his responsibilities included protection of the frontier. He had significant autonomy due in part to the distance from his superiors.

 

The tasks of the vicarius were to control and coordinate the activities of governors; monitor but not interfere with the daily functioning of the Treasury and Crown Estates, which had their own administrative infrastructure; and act as the regional quartermaster-general of the armed forces. In short, as the sole civilian official with superior authority, he had general oversight of the administration, as well as direct control, while not absolute, over governors who were part of the prefecture; the other two fiscal departments were not.

 

The early-4th-century Verona List, the late-4th-century work of Sextus Rufus, and the early-5th-century List of Offices and work of Polemius Silvius all list four provinces by some variation of the names Britannia I, Britannia II, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis; all of these seem to have initially been directed by a governor (praeses) of equestrian rank. The 5th-century sources list a fifth province named Valentia and give its governor and Maxima's a consular rank. Ammianus mentions Valentia as well, describing its creation by Count Theodosius in 369 after the quelling of the Great Conspiracy. Ammianus considered it a re-creation of a formerly lost province, leading some to think there had been an earlier fifth province under another name (may be the enigmatic "Vespasiana"), and leading others to place Valentia beyond Hadrian's Wall, in the territory abandoned south of the Antonine Wall.

 

Reconstructions of the provinces and provincial capitals during this period partially rely on ecclesiastical records. On the assumption that the early bishoprics mimicked the imperial hierarchy, scholars use the list of bishops for the 314 Council of Arles. The list is patently corrupt: the British delegation is given as including a Bishop "Eborius" of Eboracum and two bishops "from Londinium" (one de civitate Londinensi and the other de civitate colonia Londinensium). The error is variously emended: Bishop Ussher proposed Colonia, Selden Col. or Colon. Camalodun., and Spelman Colonia Cameloduni (all various names of Colchester); Gale and Bingham offered colonia Lindi and Henry Colonia Lindum (both Lincoln); and Bishop Stillingfleet and Francis Thackeray read it as a scribal error of Civ. Col. Londin. for an original Civ. Col. Leg. II (Caerleon). On the basis of the Verona List, the priest and deacon who accompanied the bishops in some manuscripts are ascribed to the fourth province.

 

In the 12th century, Gerald of Wales described the supposedly metropolitan sees of the early British church established by the legendary SS Fagan and "Duvian". He placed Britannia Prima in Wales and western England with its capital at "Urbs Legionum" (Caerleon); Britannia Secunda in Kent and southern England with its capital at "Dorobernia" (Canterbury); Flavia in Mercia and central England with its capital at "Lundonia" (London); "Maximia" in northern England with its capital at Eboracum (York); and Valentia in "Albania which is now Scotland" with its capital at St Andrews. Modern scholars generally dispute the last: some place Valentia at or beyond Hadrian's Wall but St Andrews is beyond even the Antonine Wall and Gerald seems to have simply been supporting the antiquity of its church for political reasons.

 

A common modern reconstruction places the consular province of Maxima at Londinium, on the basis of its status as the seat of the diocesan vicarius; places Prima in the west according to Gerald's traditional account but moves its capital to Corinium of the Dobunni (Cirencester) on the basis of an artifact recovered there referring to Lucius Septimius, a provincial rector; places Flavia north of Maxima, with its capital placed at Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) to match one emendation of the bishops list from Arles;[d] and places Secunda in the north with its capital at Eboracum (York). Valentia is placed variously in northern Wales around Deva (Chester); beside Hadrian's Wall around Luguvalium (Carlisle); and between the walls along Dere Street.

 

4th century

Emperor Constantius returned to Britain in 306, despite his poor health, with an army aiming to invade northern Britain, the provincial defences having been rebuilt in the preceding years. Little is known of his campaigns with scant archaeological evidence, but fragmentary historical sources suggest he reached the far north of Britain and won a major battle in early summer before returning south. His son Constantine (later Constantine the Great) spent a year in northern Britain at his father's side, campaigning against the Picts beyond Hadrian's Wall in the summer and autumn. Constantius died in York in July 306 with his son at his side. Constantine then successfully used Britain as the starting point of his march to the imperial throne, unlike the earlier usurper, Albinus.

 

In the middle of the century, the province was loyal for a few years to the usurper Magnentius, who succeeded Constans following the latter's death. After the defeat and death of Magnentius in the Battle of Mons Seleucus in 353, Constantius II dispatched his chief imperial notary Paulus Catena to Britain to hunt down Magnentius's supporters. The investigation deteriorated into a witch-hunt, which forced the vicarius Flavius Martinus to intervene. When Paulus retaliated by accusing Martinus of treason, the vicarius attacked Paulus with a sword, with the aim of assassinating him, but in the end he committed suicide.

 

As the 4th century progressed, there were increasing attacks from the Saxons in the east and the Scoti (Irish) in the west. A series of forts had been built, starting around 280, to defend the coasts, but these preparations were not enough when, in 367, a general assault of Saxons, Picts, Scoti and Attacotti, combined with apparent dissension in the garrison on Hadrian's Wall, left Roman Britain prostrate. The invaders overwhelmed the entire western and northern regions of Britannia and the cities were sacked. This crisis, sometimes called the Barbarian Conspiracy or the Great Conspiracy, was settled by Count Theodosius from 368 with a string of military and civil reforms. Theodosius crossed from Bononia (Boulogne-sur-Mer) and marched on Londinium where he began to deal with the invaders and made his base.[ An amnesty was promised to deserters which enabled Theodosius to regarrison abandoned forts. By the end of the year Hadrian's Wall was retaken and order returned. Considerable reorganization was undertaken in Britain, including the creation of a new province named Valentia, probably to better address the state of the far north. A new Dux Britanniarum was appointed, Dulcitius, with Civilis to head a new civilian administration.

 

Another imperial usurper, Magnus Maximus, raised the standard of revolt at Segontium (Caernarfon) in north Wales in 383, and crossed the English Channel. Maximus held much of the western empire, and fought a successful campaign against the Picts and Scots around 384. His continental exploits required troops from Britain, and it appears that forts at Chester and elsewhere were abandoned in this period, triggering raids and settlement in north Wales by the Irish. His rule was ended in 388, but not all the British troops may have returned: the Empire's military resources were stretched to the limit along the Rhine and Danube. Around 396 there were more barbarian incursions into Britain. Stilicho led a punitive expedition. It seems peace was restored by 399, and it is likely that no further garrisoning was ordered; by 401 more troops were withdrawn, to assist in the war against Alaric I.

 

End of Roman rule

The traditional view of historians, informed by the work of Michael Rostovtzeff, was of a widespread economic decline at the beginning of the 5th century. Consistent archaeological evidence has told another story, and the accepted view is undergoing re-evaluation. Some features are agreed: more opulent but fewer urban houses, an end to new public building and some abandonment of existing ones, with the exception of defensive structures, and the widespread formation of "dark earth" deposits indicating increased horticulture within urban precincts. Turning over the basilica at Silchester to industrial uses in the late 3rd century, doubtless officially condoned, marks an early stage in the de-urbanisation of Roman Britain.

 

The abandonment of some sites is now believed to be later than had been thought. Many buildings changed use but were not destroyed. There was a growing number of barbarian attacks, but these targeted vulnerable rural settlements rather than towns. Some villas such as Chedworth, Great Casterton in Rutland and Hucclecote in Gloucestershire had new mosaic floors laid around this time, suggesting that economic problems may have been limited and patchy. Many suffered some decay before being abandoned in the 5th century; the story of Saint Patrick indicates that villas were still occupied until at least 430. Exceptionally, new buildings were still going up in this period in Verulamium and Cirencester. Some urban centres, for example Canterbury, Cirencester, Wroxeter, Winchester and Gloucester, remained active during the 5th and 6th centuries, surrounded by large farming estates.

 

Urban life had generally grown less intense by the fourth quarter of the 4th century, and coins minted between 378 and 388 are very rare, indicating a likely combination of economic decline, diminishing numbers of troops, problems with the payment of soldiers and officials or with unstable conditions during the usurpation of Magnus Maximus 383–87. Coinage circulation increased during the 390s, but never attained the levels of earlier decades. Copper coins are very rare after 402, though minted silver and gold coins from hoards indicate they were still present in the province even if they were not being spent. By 407 there were very few new Roman coins going into circulation, and by 430 it is likely that coinage as a medium of exchange had been abandoned. Mass-produced wheel thrown pottery ended at approximately the same time; the rich continued to use metal and glass vessels, while the poor made do with humble "grey ware" or resorted to leather or wooden containers.

 

Sub-Roman Britain

Towards the end of the 4th century Roman rule in Britain came under increasing pressure from barbarian attacks. Apparently, there were not enough troops to mount an effective defence. After elevating two disappointing usurpers, the army chose a soldier, Constantine III, to become emperor in 407. He crossed to Gaul but was defeated by Honorius; it is unclear how many troops remained or ever returned, or whether a commander-in-chief in Britain was ever reappointed. A Saxon incursion in 408 was apparently repelled by the Britons, and in 409 Zosimus records that the natives expelled the Roman civilian administration. Zosimus may be referring to the Bacaudic rebellion of the Breton inhabitants of Armorica since he describes how, in the aftermath of the revolt, all of Armorica and the rest of Gaul followed the example of the Brettaniai. A letter from Emperor Honorius in 410 has traditionally been seen as rejecting a British appeal for help, but it may have been addressed to Bruttium or Bologna. With the imperial layers of the military and civil government gone, administration and justice fell to municipal authorities, and local warlords gradually emerged all over Britain, still utilizing Romano-British ideals and conventions. Historian Stuart Laycock has investigated this process and emphasised elements of continuity from the British tribes in the pre-Roman and Roman periods, through to the native post-Roman kingdoms.

 

In British tradition, pagan Saxons were invited by Vortigern to assist in fighting the Picts, Scoti, and Déisi. (Germanic migration into Roman Britannia may have begun much earlier. There is recorded evidence, for example, of Germanic auxiliaries supporting the legions in Britain in the 1st and 2nd centuries.) The new arrivals rebelled, plunging the country into a series of wars that eventually led to the Saxon occupation of Lowland Britain by 600. Around this time, many Britons fled to Brittany (hence its name), Galicia and probably Ireland. A significant date in sub-Roman Britain is the Groans of the Britons, an unanswered appeal to Aetius, leading general of the western Empire, for assistance against Saxon invasion in 446. Another is the Battle of Deorham in 577, after which the significant cities of Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester fell and the Saxons reached the western sea.

 

Historians generally reject the historicity of King Arthur, who is supposed to have resisted the Anglo-Saxon conquest according to later medieval legends.

 

Trade

During the Roman period Britain's continental trade was principally directed across the Southern North Sea and Eastern Channel, focusing on the narrow Strait of Dover, with more limited links via the Atlantic seaways. The most important British ports were London and Richborough, whilst the continental ports most heavily engaged in trade with Britain were Boulogne and the sites of Domburg and Colijnsplaat at the mouth of the river Scheldt. During the Late Roman period it is likely that the shore forts played some role in continental trade alongside their defensive functions.

 

Exports to Britain included: coin; pottery, particularly red-gloss terra sigillata (samian ware) from southern, central and eastern Gaul, as well as various other wares from Gaul and the Rhine provinces; olive oil from southern Spain in amphorae; wine from Gaul in amphorae and barrels; salted fish products from the western Mediterranean and Brittany in barrels and amphorae; preserved olives from southern Spain in amphorae; lava quern-stones from Mayen on the middle Rhine; glass; and some agricultural products. Britain's exports are harder to detect archaeologically, but will have included metals, such as silver and gold and some lead, iron and copper. Other exports probably included agricultural products, oysters and salt, whilst large quantities of coin would have been re-exported back to the continent as well.

 

These products moved as a result of private trade and also through payments and contracts established by the Roman state to support its military forces and officials on the island, as well as through state taxation and extraction of resources. Up until the mid-3rd century, the Roman state's payments appear to have been unbalanced, with far more products sent to Britain, to support its large military force (which had reached c. 53,000 by the mid-2nd century), than were extracted from the island.

 

It has been argued that Roman Britain's continental trade peaked in the late 1st century AD and thereafter declined as a result of an increasing reliance on local products by the population of Britain, caused by economic development on the island and by the Roman state's desire to save money by shifting away from expensive long-distance imports. Evidence has been outlined that suggests that the principal decline in Roman Britain's continental trade may have occurred in the late 2nd century AD, from c. 165 AD onwards. This has been linked to the economic impact of contemporary Empire-wide crises: the Antonine Plague and the Marcomannic Wars.

 

From the mid-3rd century onwards, Britain no longer received such a wide range and extensive quantity of foreign imports as it did during the earlier part of the Roman period; vast quantities of coin from continental mints reached the island, whilst there is historical evidence for the export of large amounts of British grain to the continent during the mid-4th century. During the latter part of the Roman period British agricultural products, paid for by both the Roman state and by private consumers, clearly played an important role in supporting the military garrisons and urban centres of the northwestern continental Empire. This came about as a result of the rapid decline in the size of the British garrison from the mid-3rd century onwards (thus freeing up more goods for export), and because of 'Germanic' incursions across the Rhine, which appear to have reduced rural settlement and agricultural output in northern Gaul.

 

Economy

Mineral extraction sites such as the Dolaucothi gold mine were probably first worked by the Roman army from c. 75, and at some later stage passed to civilian operators. The mine developed as a series of opencast workings, mainly by the use of hydraulic mining methods. They are described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History in great detail. Essentially, water supplied by aqueducts was used to prospect for ore veins by stripping away soil to reveal the bedrock. If veins were present, they were attacked using fire-setting and the ore removed for comminution. The dust was washed in a small stream of water and the heavy gold dust and gold nuggets collected in riffles. The diagram at right shows how Dolaucothi developed from c. 75 through to the 1st century. When opencast work was no longer feasible, tunnels were driven to follow the veins. The evidence from the site shows advanced technology probably under the control of army engineers.

 

The Wealden ironworking zone, the lead and silver mines of the Mendip Hills and the tin mines of Cornwall seem to have been private enterprises leased from the government for a fee. Mining had long been practised in Britain (see Grimes Graves), but the Romans introduced new technical knowledge and large-scale industrial production to revolutionise the industry. It included hydraulic mining to prospect for ore by removing overburden as well as work alluvial deposits. The water needed for such large-scale operations was supplied by one or more aqueducts, those surviving at Dolaucothi being especially impressive. Many prospecting areas were in dangerous, upland country, and, although mineral exploitation was presumably one of the main reasons for the Roman invasion, it had to wait until these areas were subdued.

 

By the 3rd and 4th centuries, small towns could often be found near villas. In these towns, villa owners and small-scale farmers could obtain specialist tools. Lowland Britain in the 4th century was agriculturally prosperous enough to export grain to the continent. This prosperity lay behind the blossoming of villa building and decoration that occurred between AD 300 and 350.

 

Britain's cities also consumed Roman-style pottery and other goods, and were centres through which goods could be distributed elsewhere. At Wroxeter in Shropshire, stock smashed into a gutter during a 2nd-century fire reveals that Gaulish samian ware was being sold alongside mixing bowls from the Mancetter-Hartshill industry of the West Midlands. Roman designs were most popular, but rural craftsmen still produced items derived from the Iron Age La Tène artistic traditions. Britain was home to much gold, which attracted Roman invaders. By the 3rd century, Britain's economy was diverse and well established, with commerce extending into the non-Romanised north.

 

Government

Further information: Governors of Roman Britain, Roman client kingdoms in Britain, and Roman auxiliaries in Britain

Under the Roman Empire, administration of peaceful provinces was ultimately the remit of the Senate, but those, like Britain, that required permanent garrisons, were placed under the Emperor's control. In practice imperial provinces were run by resident governors who were members of the Senate and had held the consulship. These men were carefully selected, often having strong records of military success and administrative ability. In Britain, a governor's role was primarily military, but numerous other tasks were also his responsibility, such as maintaining diplomatic relations with local client kings, building roads, ensuring the public courier system functioned, supervising the civitates and acting as a judge in important legal cases. When not campaigning, he would travel the province hearing complaints and recruiting new troops.

 

To assist him in legal matters he had an adviser, the legatus juridicus, and those in Britain appear to have been distinguished lawyers perhaps because of the challenge of incorporating tribes into the imperial system and devising a workable method of taxing them. Financial administration was dealt with by a procurator with junior posts for each tax-raising power. Each legion in Britain had a commander who answered to the governor and, in time of war, probably directly ruled troublesome districts. Each of these commands carried a tour of duty of two to three years in different provinces. Below these posts was a network of administrative managers covering intelligence gathering, sending reports to Rome, organising military supplies and dealing with prisoners. A staff of seconded soldiers provided clerical services.

 

Colchester was probably the earliest capital of Roman Britain, but it was soon eclipsed by London with its strong mercantile connections. The different forms of municipal organisation in Britannia were known as civitas (which were subdivided, amongst other forms, into colonies such as York, Colchester, Gloucester and Lincoln and municipalities such as Verulamium), and were each governed by a senate of local landowners, whether Brythonic or Roman, who elected magistrates concerning judicial and civic affairs. The various civitates sent representatives to a yearly provincial council in order to profess loyalty to the Roman state, to send direct petitions to the Emperor in times of extraordinary need, and to worship the imperial cult.

 

Demographics

Roman Britain had an estimated population between 2.8 million and 3 million people at the end of the second century. At the end of the fourth century, it had an estimated population of 3.6 million people, of whom 125,000 consisted of the Roman army and their families and dependents.[80] The urban population of Roman Britain was about 240,000 people at the end of the fourth century. The capital city of Londinium is estimated to have had a population of about 60,000 people. Londinium was an ethnically diverse city with inhabitants from the Roman Empire, including natives of Britannia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. There was also cultural diversity in other Roman-British towns, which were sustained by considerable migration, from Britannia and other Roman territories, including continental Europe, Roman Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. In a study conducted in 2012, around 45 percent of sites investigated dating from the Roman period had at least one individual of North African origin.

 

Town and country

During their occupation of Britain the Romans founded a number of important settlements, many of which survive. The towns suffered attrition in the later 4th century, when public building ceased and some were abandoned to private uses. Place names survived the deurbanised Sub-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods, and historiography has been at pains to signal the expected survivals, but archaeology shows that a bare handful of Roman towns were continuously occupied. According to S.T. Loseby, the very idea of a town as a centre of power and administration was reintroduced to England by the Roman Christianising mission to Canterbury, and its urban revival was delayed to the 10th century.

 

Roman towns can be broadly grouped in two categories. Civitates, "public towns" were formally laid out on a grid plan, and their role in imperial administration occasioned the construction of public buildings. The much more numerous category of vici, "small towns" grew on informal plans, often round a camp or at a ford or crossroads; some were not small, others were scarcely urban, some not even defended by a wall, the characteristic feature of a place of any importance.

 

Cities and towns which have Roman origins, or were extensively developed by them are listed with their Latin names in brackets; civitates are marked C

 

Alcester (Alauna)

Alchester

Aldborough, North Yorkshire (Isurium Brigantum) C

Bath (Aquae Sulis) C

Brough (Petuaria) C

Buxton (Aquae Arnemetiae)

Caerleon (Isca Augusta) C

Caernarfon (Segontium) C

Caerwent (Venta Silurum) C

Caister-on-Sea C

Canterbury (Durovernum Cantiacorum) C

Carlisle (Luguvalium) C

Carmarthen (Moridunum) C

Chelmsford (Caesaromagus)

Chester (Deva Victrix) C

Chester-le-Street (Concangis)

Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum) C

Cirencester (Corinium) C

Colchester (Camulodunum) C

Corbridge (Coria) C

Dorchester (Durnovaria) C

Dover (Portus Dubris)

Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) C

Gloucester (Glevum) C

Great Chesterford (the name of this vicus is unknown)

Ilchester (Lindinis) C

Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum) C

Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) C

London (Londinium) C

Manchester (Mamucium) C

Newcastle upon Tyne (Pons Aelius)

Northwich (Condate)

St Albans (Verulamium) C

Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) C

Towcester (Lactodurum)

Whitchurch (Mediolanum) C

Winchester (Venta Belgarum) C

Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) C

York (Eboracum) C

 

Religion

The druids, the Celtic priestly caste who were believed to originate in Britain, were outlawed by Claudius, and in 61 they vainly defended their sacred groves from destruction by the Romans on the island of Mona (Anglesey). Under Roman rule the Britons continued to worship native Celtic deities, such as Ancasta, but often conflated with their Roman equivalents, like Mars Rigonemetos at Nettleham.

 

The degree to which earlier native beliefs survived is difficult to gauge precisely. Certain European ritual traits such as the significance of the number 3, the importance of the head and of water sources such as springs remain in the archaeological record, but the differences in the votive offerings made at the baths at Bath, Somerset, before and after the Roman conquest suggest that continuity was only partial. Worship of the Roman emperor is widely recorded, especially at military sites. The founding of a Roman temple to Claudius at Camulodunum was one of the impositions that led to the revolt of Boudica. By the 3rd century, Pagans Hill Roman Temple in Somerset was able to exist peaceably and it did so into the 5th century.

 

Pagan religious practices were supported by priests, represented in Britain by votive deposits of priestly regalia such as chain crowns from West Stow and Willingham Fen.

 

Eastern cults such as Mithraism also grew in popularity towards the end of the occupation. The London Mithraeum is one example of the popularity of mystery religions among the soldiery. Temples to Mithras also exist in military contexts at Vindobala on Hadrian's Wall (the Rudchester Mithraeum) and at Segontium in Roman Wales (the Caernarfon Mithraeum).

 

Christianity

It is not clear when or how Christianity came to Britain. A 2nd-century "word square" has been discovered in Mamucium, the Roman settlement of Manchester. It consists of an anagram of PATER NOSTER carved on a piece of amphora. There has been discussion by academics whether the "word square" is a Christian artefact, but if it is, it is one of the earliest examples of early Christianity in Britain. The earliest confirmed written evidence for Christianity in Britain is a statement by Tertullian, c. 200 AD, in which he described "all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ". Archaeological evidence for Christian communities begins to appear in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Small timber churches are suggested at Lincoln and Silchester and baptismal fonts have been found at Icklingham and the Saxon Shore Fort at Richborough. The Icklingham font is made of lead, and visible in the British Museum. A Roman Christian graveyard exists at the same site in Icklingham. A possible Roman 4th-century church and associated burial ground was also discovered at Butt Road on the south-west outskirts of Colchester during the construction of the new police station there, overlying an earlier pagan cemetery. The Water Newton Treasure is a hoard of Christian silver church plate from the early 4th century and the Roman villas at Lullingstone and Hinton St Mary contained Christian wall paintings and mosaics respectively. A large 4th-century cemetery at Poundbury with its east–west oriented burials and lack of grave goods has been interpreted as an early Christian burial ground, although such burial rites were also becoming increasingly common in pagan contexts during the period.

 

The Church in Britain seems to have developed the customary diocesan system, as evidenced from the records of the Council of Arles in Gaul in 314: represented at the council were bishops from thirty-five sees from Europe and North Africa, including three bishops from Britain, Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius, possibly a bishop of Lincoln. No other early sees are documented, and the material remains of early church structures are far to seek. The existence of a church in the forum courtyard of Lincoln and the martyrium of Saint Alban on the outskirts of Roman Verulamium are exceptional. Alban, the first British Christian martyr and by far the most prominent, is believed to have died in the early 4th century (some date him in the middle 3rd century), followed by Saints Julius and Aaron of Isca Augusta. Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire by Constantine I in 313. Theodosius I made Christianity the state religion of the empire in 391, and by the 5th century it was well established. One belief labelled a heresy by the church authorities — Pelagianism — was originated by a British monk teaching in Rome: Pelagius lived c. 354 to c. 420/440.

 

A letter found on a lead tablet in Bath, Somerset, datable to c. 363, had been widely publicised as documentary evidence regarding the state of Christianity in Britain during Roman times. According to its first translator, it was written in Wroxeter by a Christian man called Vinisius to a Christian woman called Nigra, and was claimed as the first epigraphic record of Christianity in Britain. This translation of the letter was apparently based on grave paleographical errors, and the text has nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact relates to pagan rituals.

 

Environmental changes

The Romans introduced a number of species to Britain, including possibly the now-rare Roman nettle (Urtica pilulifera), said to have been used by soldiers to warm their arms and legs, and the edible snail Helix pomatia. There is also some evidence they may have introduced rabbits, but of the smaller southern mediterranean type. The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) prevalent in modern Britain is assumed to have been introduced from the continent after the Norman invasion of 1066. Box (Buxus sempervirens) is rarely recorded before the Roman period, but becomes a common find in towns and villas

 

Legacy

During their occupation of Britain the Romans built an extensive network of roads which continued to be used in later centuries and many are still followed today. The Romans also built water supply, sanitation and wastewater systems. Many of Britain's major cities, such as London (Londinium), Manchester (Mamucium) and York (Eboracum), were founded by the Romans, but the original Roman settlements were abandoned not long after the Romans left.

 

Unlike many other areas of the Western Roman Empire, the current majority language is not a Romance language, or a language descended from the pre-Roman inhabitants. The British language at the time of the invasion was Common Brittonic, and remained so after the Romans withdrew. It later split into regional languages, notably Cumbric, Cornish, Breton and Welsh. Examination of these languages suggests some 800 Latin words were incorporated into Common Brittonic (see Brittonic languages). The current majority language, English, is based on the languages of the Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe

Wien - Verloren

 

Donau City

 

Donau City, or Vienna DC, is a new part of Vienna's 22nd District Donaustadt, next to both the Reichsbrücke and the left bank of the Danube's 21.1 km new channel, Neue Donau.

 

Construction work for the first building on this site, the Andromeda Tower, started in 1996.

 

Although the Danube river has been inextricably connected with Vienna, for centuries, it had played only a subordinate role in the city of Vienna.

 

Unlike in many other cities, the Danube River, because of the numerous floods it regularly caused, was omitted from the urban area. Buildings grew up in Vienna on both sides of the Danube - but not up to the Danube. Only after extensive flood-control engineering and the creation of the New Danube relief channel, with Danube Island, in the 1970s, was the surrounding cityscape of the Danube of interest to builders.

 

The establishment of Donau City had its origins in the organization of the Vienna International Garden Festival in 1964. This was on a site of a former landfill, later superficially rehabilitated, in an area between the Old Danube and the New Danube.

 

In 1962, the construction of the Danube Tower began, and two years later, the Garden Festival was held. The site of the garden show was known as Donaupark. Not far from Donaupark, in 1967, the planning of the UNO-City was started, opened in 1979. Through the construction of the U1 and the Reichsbruecke (Empire Bridge), the UN-City had a high-ranking access to the traffic system.

 

The terrain gained increasing importance with the opening of the congress center Austria Center Vienna in 1987. Next, at the end of the 1980s, there were plans to hold a Vienna-Budapest EXPO along the northern bank of the Danube in Vienna. However, the planned EXPO 1995 was canceled because a majority of Viennese voters rejected it in a referendum on the project. The site was then developed for a subsequent use as a multifunctional district.

 

In 1991, the EXPO organizing corporation was succeeded by the Vienna Danube Region Development Corporation (WED), with major Austrian banks and insurance companies (BA-CA, Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Bank for Labor and Economy, Invest Bank AG, UNIQA, Wiener Städtische) as principal shareholders.[2] WED owns the area and is responsible for its overall development. Within a few years, the district became a second urban center in Vienna, with residential and office buildings, research facilities, recreational facilities and event locations.

 

Work on the construction of infrastructure for future use began in 1993. The Danube Bank Motorway (A22) was roofed over, providing more area. The foundation for the first building was completed in 1995, with the start of construction of the Andromeda Tower.

 

The total area is 17.4 hectares. Of this total, approximately 1.7 million cubic meters are used for construction, which represents a gross floor area of approximately 500,000 square meters. Nearly two-thirds of those buildings are already completed and utilized.

 

Following the cancellation of the EXPO in 1991 was then still in the undeveloped area within a few years, an urban centre with residential and office buildings, research facilities, recreational facilities and event locations, the Donau City.

 

The Donau City development concept is a broad mix of uses: office and commercial uses, up to 70 percent, residential use of about 20 percent, and cultural and Freitzeiteinrichtungen of approximately 10 percent.

 

Approximately 7,500 people currently live and work in this new "city within a city". With the overall expansion, which is expected to be completed in 2012, the population could increase to 15,000. International companies such as IBM, sanofi-aventis and Bauholding Strabag SE are also located in Donau City. Also established are well-known high-tech companies that deal with their employees and scientific institutions in Vienna's first Science and Technology Park, Tech Gate Vienna.

 

In addition to the above institutions, Donau City has stores, restaurants, cafes, offices, a school and a church. The area bordering the Danube Island has recreation areas, Donaupark and Old Danube. Donau City has two direct connections to the motorway network, and the Vienna International Airport is about 20 minutes away.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die Donau City ist ein ab 1996 neu errichteter Stadtteil im 22. Wiener Gemeindebezirk, Donaustadt. Sie liegt unmittelbar neben der Reichsbrücke und ist das stadtzentrumsnächste Viertel am linken Donauufer.

 

Die Donau ist untrennbar mit der Geschichte Wiens verbunden, verlief aber jahrhundertelang außerhalb der Stadt und fungierte als Verkehrsweg ebenso wie als Verkehrshindernis. Die zahlreichen Überschwemmungen des unregulierten Stromes ließen es nicht geraten erscheinen, wichtige Gebäude direkt am Wasser, in den flachen Donauauen oder auf den vom Strom gebildeten Inseln zu errichten. Brücken bestanden zumeist aus Holz und mussten nach Hochwässern nicht selten neu errichtet werden.

 

Die Donauregulierung von 1870 bis 1875 machte das Areal der Donau City durch den neu angelegten Hubertusdamm, der parallel zum neuen Hauptstrom das Hinterland vom Überschwemmungsgebiet abgrenzte, hochwassersicher. Der bisherige Hauptstrom wurde zum stehenden Gewässer, Alte Donau genannt. Auf dem Areal befanden sich aber ein Altarm, das südlich der Wagramer Straße bis heute bestehende Kaiserwasser, und Aulandschaften, die als Bauland vorerst nicht gefragt waren. 1935 erwarb die Stadt Wien dieses Auland vom Stift Klosterneuburg. Teile des Areals dienten zwischen den Weltkriegen und danach als Mistablagerungsstätte, andere Teile wurden mit Schrebergärten besiedelt. Die schlechte Bauqualität der in Notzeiten errichteten Hütten führte zum Namen Bretteldorf. Die Pachtverträge der rund 1000 Einwohner dieses Gebietes wurden von der Stadt bis in die 1960er Jahre nach und nach gekündigt. Im Gegenzug erweiterte diese die Mülldeponie.

 

Die Freimachung des Geländes (die frühere Deponie wurde nur oberflächlich saniert) und die Abhaltung der Wiener Internationalen Gartenschau 1964 (WIG 64) auf einem Teil des Areals bildeten die Initialzündung für alle weiteren städtebaulichen Investitionen. Der ab 1962 errichtete Donauturm wurde zum Wahrzeichen der Gegend; das Gartenschaugelände blieb als sogenannter Donaupark großteils bis heute erhalten. Für den Geländestreifen entlang der Wagramer Straße, der wichtigsten Ausfallstraße Wiens nach Nordosten, wurde städtische Bebauung geplant, ohne dass damals bereits konkrete Projekte vorgelegen wären.

 

Dies änderte sich, als Österreich 1967 den Vereinten Nationen (UNO) ein Amtssitzzentrum in Wien versprach. Das sogenannte Vienna International Centre (VIC), Teil der UNO-City, wurde schließlich ab 1973 zwischen dem verkleinerten Donaupark und der Wagramer Straße errichtet und im August 1979 eröffnet. Die Bauten des VIC gaben größenmäßig einen neuen, großstädtischen Maßstab für ihre Umgebung vor, die bis dahin Stadtrandcharakter hatte.

 

Der Einsturz der zweiten Reichsbrücke 1976 sollte eine zusätzliche Aufwertung des Areals bedeuten. In den Hohlkasten der bis 1980 wiedererrichteten Brücke wurde nun auch eine U-Bahn-Trasse eingeplant. Die Linie U1 erreichte somit bereits im Jahr 1982 – früher als ursprünglich geplant – das nördliche Donauufer. Über die Station Kaisermühlen – Vienna International Centre ist das Stadtzentrum seither in wenigen Minuten erreichbar. 1972–1988 wurde die Donau im Raum Wien neuerlich reguliert, um verbliebene Hochwassergefahren zu beseitigen. Neben dem Areal der heutigen Donau City entstanden dabei, parallel zum Hauptstrom, die Neue Donau, ein zumeist stehendes Gewässer, das sich für Freizeitnutzung eignete, und die Donauinsel zwischen Neuer Donau und Hauptstrom, die nach Entscheid der Stadtverwaltung nicht verbaut, sondern ebenfalls für Freizeitnutzung bereitstehen sollte. 1987 wurde als zweiter Teil der UNO-City neben dem Vienna International Centre (VIC) das von Staat und Stadtverwaltung finanzierte Kongresszentrum Austria Center Vienna (ACV) eröffnet.

 

Ende der achtziger Jahre erwog Wien gemeinsam mit Budapest im Jahr 1995 eine Weltausstellung auszurichten. Am 14. Dezember 1989 erhielt man für dieses Vorhaben den Zuschlag. Die Expo 95 sollte demnach von 29. April bis 26. Oktober 1995 stattfinden. Als Ausstellungsgelände wurde der Bereich „Donauraum – Konferenzzentrum“ (ca. 50 ha) definiert. Die Nachnutzung des damals noch kontaminierten und alluvialen Stück Lands wurde als entscheidender Faktor der Expo-Planung bestimmt. Das Gelände sollte im Anschluss an die Weltausstellung gänzlich in die gegebene Stadtstruktur integriert werden. Am 30. März 1990 wurde hierfür ein Leitprogramm für die städtebauliche Entwicklung beschlossen. Die Gestaltung des Ausstellungsgeländes sollte dabei auf Grundlage eines von der (1989 gegründeten) Expo-Vienna AG ausgelobten Architektenwettbewerbs erfolgen. Auf temporäre Bauten größeren Ausmaßes sollte verzichtet werden. Der Wettbewerb „Bebauungs- und Gestaltungskonzepte EXPO 95 in Wien und Nachnutzung“ wurde bis Ende 1990 abgehalten. Teilnahmeberechtigt waren Architekten aus Österreich und Ungarn, sowie ausgewählte internationale Büros. Weiters wurden auch Studierende eingeladen sich zu beteiligen. Aus insgesamt 84 Projekten (65 von Architekten und 19 von Absolventen) wurde jenes von Sepp Frank und Rudolf Zabrana ausgewählt. Entgegen ursprünglicher Pläne die einstige Deponie mit einer Platte zu versiegeln, wurde diese schlussendlich vollständig ausgehoben. Diese Begleitmaßnahme der Expo-Vorbereitungen umfasste einen Aushub von insgesamt rund 965.000 Tonnen Material, davon 240.000 Tonnen Hausmüll aus der Nachkriegszeit bis 1963/64. Im Zuge einer aus politischen Gründen durchgeführten Volksbefragung vom 14. bis 16. Mai 1991 sprachen sich 64.85 % der Befragten jedoch gegen die Abhaltung der Expo aus; ungeachtet breiter Unterstützung durch Politik, Medien und Wirtschaftskreise. In Folge dessen zog die Republik Österreich die Bewerbung für den Standort Wien in der Generalversammlung des BIE am 5. Juni 1991 wieder zurück.

 

Nach Absage der Expo war man bestrebt das ungenutzte, aber bereits im Umbau befindliche Areal weiter baureif zu machen und zu entwickeln. Hierfür wurde noch 1991 die Auffanggesellschaft WED Wiener Entwicklungsgesellschaft für den Donauraum AG gegründet. [3] Anfang der neunziger Jahre wurden daraufhin die Architekten Adolf Krischanitz und Heinz Neumann mit einem Masterplan für einen neuen, multifunktionalen Stadtteil auf dem freien Areal (das vom ursprünglich größeren Donaupark abgetrennt wurde) zwischen VIC, ACV und Hubertusdamm bzw. Neuer Donau beauftragt. Die WED wählte dafür den Namen Donau City. Bereits im Zuge der Planungen für die Weltausstellung wurde erwogen, die Donauufer Autobahn A 22 im Bereich des VIC zu Überplatten; auch im Hinblick auf eine spätere Nachnutzung des Geländes. An diesem Vorhaben wurde festgehalten und die Autobahn bis 1996 schlussendlich auf einem Abschnitt von 2.150 m überplattet. Der dadurch entstandene Tunnel Kaisermühlen ist heute die am meisten befahrene Tunnelanlage Österreichs. Die Überdeckung der Donauufer Autobahn wurde gleichsam als Fundament für eine künftige Bebauung konzipiert. Dafür wurde über dem Fahrraum des Tunnels ein 2,20 Meter hoher Hohlkasten ausgebildet, der beispielsweise Kellerabteile und Technikräume künftiger Neubauten aufnehmen kann. Die für den Autobahnbetrieb erforderlichen technischen Anlagen sind hingegen vorrangig in seitlichen Kollektoren angesiedelt.

 

Um die nun entstandenen enormen Niveauunterschiede (nach Aushub der einstigen Deponie lag der gewachsene Boden neun Meter unter dem Niveau der Umgebung) auszugleichen, wurde auch der neue Stadtteil durch eine solche Überbauung (die sogenannte Donauplatte) charakterisiert. Für den Auto- und Fußgängerverkehr sind dabei unterschiedliche Ebenen vorgesehen. 1993 wurde mit der Errichtung der Infrastruktur für die kommende Nutzung begonnen. Der Grundstein für das erste Gebäude, den Andromeda-Tower, wurde 1995 gelegt. Als technische Voraussetzung für die Haupterschließung des Areals wurde 1996 ein – parallel zur Autobahn verlaufendes – Verteilerbauwerk fertiggestellt, welches alle Bauplätze erschließt. Das Ebenenkonzept hat bis heute Bestand, der ursprüngliche Masterplan wurde jedoch nicht weiter umgesetzt. Nach Fertigstellung von knapp zwei Drittel der Gesamtplanung wurden hier bis 2005 ca. 1,7 Millionen Kubikmeter verbaut; das entspricht einer Bruttogeschoßfläche von rund 500.000 Quadratmetern.

 

Im Jahr 2002 ließ die WED dann einen internationalen Gestaltungswettbewerb für den letzten zu entwickelnden Abschnitt ausschreiben. Den Zuschlag in diesem Gutachterverfahren erhielt der Architekt Dominique Perrault aus Paris. Im Anschluss wurde er mit der Erstellung eines Masterplans für das Gebiet beauftragt. Basierend auf diesen Plänen wurde ein städtebauliches Leitbild entworfen und am 1. Juli 2004 vom Gemeinderat beschlossen. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Projekten am Standort, wurde hier eine gemischte Nutzung vorgeschrieben. Perrault konzipierte als „Brückenkopf“ die beiden DC Towers als gebautes Eingangstor für den Stadtteil.

 

Nach Eröffnung von Turm 1 im Februar 2014, sollen in den kommenden Jahren die drei Hochhaustürme Danube Flats, DC Tower 2 und DC Tower 3 die Skyline vervollständigen. Der Zeithorizont für diese Bauvorhaben wurde in den letzten Jahren jedoch stets verschoben. Der Uferbereich war in den 1980er Jahren unter dem Namen „Copa Cagrana“ bekannt geworden und wird mittlerweile als „Copa Beach“ vermarktet.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Mischek Tower ist ein Wohngebäude im 22. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Donaustadt.

 

Das Gebäude wurde von 1998 bis 2000 nach Entwürfen des Architekten-Ehepaars Delugan-Meissl von der als Generalunternehmer agierenden Baufirma Mischek im Auftrag des Bauträgers Wiener Heim errichtet. Das 110 Meter hohe Bauwerk war bis zur Fertigstellung des Hochhauses Neue Donau im Jahr 2002 das höchste Wohngebäude Österreichs. Errichtet aus Betonfertigteilen gilt der Mischek Tower mit seinen 35 Stockwerken (ab Niveau Donauplatte, das Straßenniveau befindet sich auf Ebene −3) als das höchste Fertigteilhaus der Welt.

 

Gelegen am Rand der Donau City zwischen Donaupark und Austria Center Vienna dient der Riegel-förmige Bau optisch als Abgrenzung von Stadt zu Park. Neben dem eigentlichen Hochhaus gibt es zwei weitere Gebäudeteile mit jeweils 9 Stockwerken. Zur Donau hin grenzt unmittelbar an den Gebäudeteil Stiege 3 südlich ein Wohngebäude des Wohnparks Donaucity an.

 

Das Gebäude steht im Eigentum der Käufer der etwa 500 zum größten Teil durch das Land Wien geförderten Wohnungen.

 

(Wikipedia)

More photos and full report here: www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/2013/02/09/urbex-national-gas...

 

Briefly the National Gas Turbine Establishment at Pyestock Fleet was built in 1949 beginning with some small test cubicals inside buildings like the plant house and has since been added to over the years resulting in the huge site that stands there today.

 

For over 50 years Pyestock was at the forefront of gas turbine development. It was probably the largest site of its kind in the world. V bomber, Harrier and Tornado engines were tested on site. The power of the air house allowed Concorde’s engines to be tested in the purpose built Cell 4 at 2,000 mph. Every gas turbine installed in Royal Navy ships was checked here; captured Soviet engines were discreetly examined.

 

NGTE Pyestock closed down in 2000 and decommissioned to make way for a business park.

 

Pyestock was used for several scenes in the 2005 film Sahara by Breck Eisner, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Clive Cussler. Internal sections of Cell 3 and Cell 4 were suitably reworked for the film’s supposedly solar powered waste disposal facility.

Weapons Research Establishment and WW2 ammunitions works.

Farmers took up surveyed land at Peachy Belt, later named Penfield in 1854. The pioneering families of Penfield were Argents, Andrews, Fatchen, Sturtons and same are remembered by Argent Road, Sturton Church and road, Andrews Farm near Smithfield etc. No town emerged but the district has a school, Bible Christian Methodist Church (Zoar), cemetery, general store etc. Sadly all these lands were acquired by the Commonwealth government for war time use in 1940. The Department of Ammunitions took the land as Britain indicated that there would not be able to provide arms and ammunition to Australia for the Pacific and Asian war effort. The Department of Ammunitions was created one week after the retreat from Dunkirk by Britain. Australia had to be prepared. Work on of the Salisbury Explosives Factory (later Penfield) began in November 1940. Herbert Jory was the architect engaged by the Department of Munitions to design and manage the construction of the factory and offices. Up to 3,000 workmen was employed seven days a week so that the factory could be completed within a year. The complex eventually included 1,400 buildings including special structures for armament storage. The site was chosen away from the coast and away from the eastern states for security reasons. It was located next to the Gawler railway line which was also essential. Thus the Salisbury to Penfield railway opened in late 1941. There were three stations within the ammunition works named station one, two and three where there was a turning loop. That loop is still visible from the air and that last station still stands albeit in ruins. The provide housing for workers closer to the ammunitions site 140 transportable fibro cabin homes were quickly erected in nearby Salisbury. Trains also ran day and night for the workers who were primarily women. This was the largest explosives and ammunitions works in Australia. Finsbury works made shell cases, metal components etc. Only Penfield made the explosives and filled the explosives containers which were railed direct from Hendon ammunition works. 6,000 people were employed at Penfield doing the work over 24 hour shifts. Ammunition was made and stored until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.

 

Not long after the War the Long Range Weapons Establishment was formed at Penfield to support the guided weapons facility at Woomera. Research was conducted as part of a consortium with Britain and later the United States of America into rockets, long range weapons and nuclear weapons hence the Maralinga nuclear tests of the 1950s. Some of the earliest computing in Australia occurred at WRE Penfield. The Weapons Research Establishment consisted of five sections or wings - the Weapons Research and Development Wing, the Applied Physics Wing, the Engineering Wing, the Trial Wing and the Administrative section. WRE did the work on the first Australian satellite in 1967 making us the third country in the world to launch satellites. In the 1970s these wings were changed to weapons research, electronics research, trials research and advanced engineering. By the mid-1960s employment levels at WRE reached the wartime levels of around 6,000 people. Special groups like British Aerospace had their own facilities here. This was an era when calculators could take up half a desk and computers were huge banks of machinery taking up entire rooms. By those decades many workers walked from Elizabeth Central railway station from trains coming from the Adelaide, Angaston-Truro, Kaunda-Eudunda and Riverton. In 1971 there were still seven or eight trains a day to between Adelaide and Penfield One, Two and Three. The work of this relatively secret government facility was bolstered with the closure of the Mallala Air Force base and the establishment of the end Edinburgh Royal Australian Air base and airport in 1954. Once the UK-Australian partnership ended and the Woomera rocket range was closed down the department of Defence Science and Technology Organisation continued to use the Penfield site for research and defence work. In 1997 the Department of Defence which controlled Penfield decided to rationalise the site. In 2015 it sold off about 70% of the site and retained the remainder for the government and renamed the department defence Science and Technology Group. The DSTG now has bilateral defence agreements and research work with USA, UK, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway and Singapore. Security checks were not needed for entry to the site and a new suburb named Edinburgh Parks was created for commercial industry and warehousing. The old Penfield site still include the Methodist Church at Sturton and the attached cemetery but there is no general access to that.

 

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj]; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.

 

Vysotsky was born in Moscow at the 3rd Meshchanskaya St. (61/2) maternity hospital. His father, Semyon Volfovich (Vladimirovich) (1915–1997), was a colonel in the Soviet army, originally from Kiev. Vladimir's mother, Nina Maksimovna, (née Seryogina, 1912–2003) was Russian, and worked as a German language translator.[3] Vysotsky's family lived in a Moscow communal flat in harsh conditions, and had serious financial difficulties. When Vladimir was 10 months old, Nina had to return to her office in the Transcript bureau of the Soviet Ministry of Geodesy and Cartography (engaged in making German maps available for the Soviet military) so as to help her husband earn their family's living.

 

Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn, a theater fan. The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," often using in his public speeches expressions he could hardly have heard at home. Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New-year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You silly tossers! Give a child some respite!" His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him. A three-year-old could jeer his father in a bathroom with unexpected poetic improvisation ("Now look what's here before us / Our goat's to shave himself!") or appall unwanted guests with some street folk song, promptly steering them away. Vysotsky remembered those first three years of his life in the autobiographical Ballad of Childhood (Баллада о детстве, 1975), one of his best-known songs.

 

As World War II broke out, Semyon Vysotsky, a military reserve officer, joined the Soviet army and went to fight the Nazis. Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka, in Orenburg Oblast where the boy had to spend six days a week in a kindergarten and his mother worked for twelve hours a day in a chemical factory. In 1943, both returned to their Moscow apartment at 1st Meschanskaya St., 126. In September 1945, Vladimir joined the 1st class of the 273rd Moscow Rostokino region School.

 

In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced. From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "aunt Zhenya", at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany (later East Germany). "We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered. Here living conditions, compared to those of Nina's communal Moscow flat, were infinitely better; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-storeyed house, and the boy had a room to himself for the first time in his life. In 1949 along with his stepmother Vladimir returned to Moscow. There he joined the 5th class of the Moscow 128th School and settled at Bolshoy Karetny [ru], 15 (where they had to themselves two rooms of a four-roomed flat), with "auntie Zhenya" (who was just 28 at the time), a woman of great kindness and warmth whom he later remembered as his second mother. In 1953 Vysotsky, now much interested in theater and cinema, joined the Drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.[7] "No one in my family has had anything to do with arts, no actors or directors were there among them. But my mother admired theater and from the earliest age... each and every Saturday I've been taken up with her to watch one play or the other. And all of this, it probably stayed with me," he later reminisced. The same year he received his first ever guitar, a birthday present from Nina Maksimovna; a close friend, bard and a future well-known Soviet pop lyricist Igor Kokhanovsky taught him basic chords. In 1955 Vladimir re-settled into his mother's new home at 1st Meshchanskaya, 76. In June of the same year he graduated from school with five A's.

 

In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-Institute. It was there that he met the 3rd course student Iza Zhukova who four years later became his wife; soon the two lovers settled at the 1st Meschanskaya flat, in a common room, shielded off by a folding screen. It was also in the Studio that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava for the first time, an already popular underground bard. He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher Andrey Sinyavsky who along with his wife often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts. In 1958 Vysotsky's got his first Moscow Art Theatre role: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of student Petya in Vasily Ordynsky's The Yearlings (Сверстницы). On 20 June 1960, Vysotsky graduated from the MAT theater institute and joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre (led by Boris Ravenskikh at the time) where he spent (with intervals) almost three troubled years. These were marred by numerous administrative sanctions, due to "lack of discipline" and occasional drunken sprees which were a reaction, mainly, to the lack of serious roles and his inability to realise his artistic potential. A short stint in 1962 at the Moscow Theater of Miniatures (administered at the time by Vladimir Polyakov) ended with him being fired, officially "for a total lack of sense of humour."

 

Vysotsky's second and third films, Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, were interesting only for the fact that in both he had to be beaten up (in the first case by Aleksandr Demyanenko). "That was the way cinema greeted me," he later jokingly remarked. In 1961, Vysotsky wrote his first ever proper song, called "Tattoo" (Татуировка), which started a long and colourful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments. In June 1963, while shooting Penalty Kick (directed by Veniamin Dorman and starring Mikhail Pugovkin), Vysotsky used the Gorky Film Studio to record an hour-long reel-to-reel cassette of his own songs; copies of it quickly spread and the author's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere (although many of these songs were often being referred to as either "traditional" or "anonymous"). Just several months later Riga-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny" (Большой Каретный) and Anna Akhmatova (in a conversation with Joseph Brodsky) was quoting Vysotsky's number "I was the soul of a bad company..." taking it apparently for some brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore. In October 1964 Vysotsky recorded in chronological order 48 of his own songs, his first self-made Complete works of... compilation, which boosted his popularity as a new Moscow folk underground star.

 

In 1964, director Yuri Lyubimov invited Vysotsky to join the newly created Taganka Theatre. "'I've written some songs of my own. Won't you listen?' – he asked. I agreed to listen to just one of them, expecting our meeting to last for no more than five minutes. Instead I ended up listening to him for an entire 1.5 hours," Lyubimov remembered years later of this first audition. On 19 September 1964, Vysotsky debuted in Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan as the Second God (not to count two minor roles). A month later he came on stage as a dragoon captain (Bela's father) in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It was in Taganka that Vysotsky started to sing on stage; the War theme becoming prominent in his musical repertoire. In 1965 Vysotsky appeared in the experimental Poet and Theater (Поэт и Театр, February) show, based on Andrey Voznesensky's work and then Ten Days that Shook the World (after John Reed's book, April) and was commissioned by Lyubimov to write songs exclusively for Taganka's new World War II play. The Fallen and the Living (Павшие и Живые), premiered in October 1965, featured Vysotsky's "Stars" (Звёзды), "The Soldiers of Heeresgruppe Mitte" (Солдаты группы "Центр") and "Penal Battalions" (Штрафные батальоны), the striking examples of a completely new kind of a war song, never heard in his country before. As veteran screenwriter Nikolay Erdman put it (in conversation with Lyubimov), "Professionally, I can well understand how Mayakovsky or Seryozha Yesenin were doing it. How Volodya Vysotsky does it is totally beyond me." With his songs – in effect, miniature theatrical dramatizations (usually with a protagonist and full of dialogues), Vysotsky instantly achieved such level of credibility that real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, footballers refused to believe that the author himself had never served his time in prisons and labor camps, or fought in the War, or been a boxing/football professional. After the second of the two concerts at the Leningrad Molecular Physics institute (that was his actual debut as a solo musical performer) Vysotsky left a note for his fans in a journal which ended with words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all. With love, Vysotsky, 20 April 1965, XX c." Excuses of this kind he had to make throughout his performing career. At least one of Vysotsky's song themes – that of alcoholic abuse – was worryingly autobiographical, though. By the time his breakthrough came in 1967, he'd suffered several physical breakdowns and once was sent (by Taganka's boss) to a rehabilitation clinic, a visit he on several occasions repeated since.

 

Brecht's Life of Galileo (premiered on 17 May 1966), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role (along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage). Press reaction was mixed, some reviewers disliked the actor's overt emotionalism, but it was for the first time ever that Vysotsky's name appeared in Soviet papers. Film directors now were treating him with respect. Viktor Turov's war film I Come from the Childhood where Vysotsky got his first ever "serious" (neither comical, nor villainous) role in cinema, featured two of his songs: a spontaneous piece called "When It's Cold" (Холода) and a dark, Unknown soldier theme-inspired classic "Common Graves" (На братских могилах), sung behind the screen by the legendary Mark Bernes.

 

Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov's The Vertical (1967), a mountain climbing drama, starring Vysotsky (as Volodya the radioman), brought him all-round recognition and fame. Four of the numbers used in the film (including "Song of a Friend [fi]" (Песня о друге), released in 1968 by the Soviet recording industry monopolist Melodiya disc to become an unofficial hit) were written literally on the spot, nearby Elbrus, inspired by professional climbers' tales and one curious hotel bar conversation with a German guest who 25 years ago happened to climb these very mountains in a capacity of an Edelweiss division fighter. Another 1967 film, Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters featured Vysotsky as the geologist Maxim (paste-bearded again) with a now trademark off-the-cuff musical piece, a melancholy improvisation called "Things to Do" (Дела). All the while Vysotsky continued working hard at Taganka, with another important role under his belt (that of Mayakovsky or, rather one of the latter character's five different versions) in the experimental piece called Listen! (Послушайте!), and now regularly gave semi-official concerts where audiences greeted him as a cult hero.

 

In the end of 1967 Vysotsky got another pivotal theater role, that of Khlopusha [ru] in Pugachov (a play based on a poem by Sergei Yesenin), often described as one of Taganka's finest. "He put into his performance all the things that he excelled at and, on the other hand, it was Pugachyov that made him discover his own potential," – Soviet critic Natalya Krymova wrote years later. Several weeks after the premiere, infuriated by the actor's increasing unreliability triggered by worsening drinking problems, Lyubimov fired him – only to let him back again several months later (and thus begin the humiliating sacked-then-pardoned routine which continued for years). In June 1968 a Vysotsky-slagging campaign was launched in the Soviet press. First Sovetskaya Rossiya commented on the "epidemic spread of immoral, smutty songs," allegedly promoting "criminal world values, alcoholism, vice and immorality" and condemned their author for "sowing seeds of evil." Then Komsomolskaya Pravda linked Vysotsky with black market dealers selling his tapes somewhere in Siberia. Composer Dmitry Kabalevsky speaking from the Union of Soviet Composers' Committee tribune criticised the Soviet radio for giving an ideologically dubious, "low-life product" like "Song of a Friend" (Песня о друге) an unwarranted airplay. Playwright Alexander Stein who in his Last Parade play used several of Vysotsky's songs, was chastised by a Ministry of Culture official for "providing a tribune for this anti-Soviet scum." The phraseology prompted commentators in the West to make parallels between Vysotsky and Mikhail Zoschenko, another Soviet author who'd been officially labeled "scum" some 20 years ago.

 

Two of Vysotsky's 1968 films, Gennady Poloka's Intervention (premiered in May 1987) where he was cast as Brodsky, a dodgy even if highly artistic character, and Yevgeny Karelov's Two Comrades Were Serving (a gun-toting White Army officer Brusentsov who in the course of the film shoots his friend, his horse, Oleg Yankovsky's good guy character and, finally himself) – were severely censored, first of them shelved for twenty years. At least four of Vysotsky's 1968 songs, "Save Our Souls" (Спасите наши души), "The Wolfhunt" (Охота на волков), "Gypsy Variations" (Моя цыганская) and "The Steam-bath in White" (Банька по-белому), were hailed later as masterpieces. It was at this point that 'proper' love songs started to appear in Vysotsky's repertoire, documenting the beginning of his passionate love affair with French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 1969 Vysotsky starred in two films: The Master of Taiga where he played a villainous Siberian timber-floating brigadier, and more entertaining Dangerous Tour. The latter was criticized in the Soviet press for taking a farcical approach to the subject of the Bolshevik underground activities but for a wider Soviet audience this was an important opportunity to enjoy the charismatic actor's presence on big screen. In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vysotsky embarked on a massive and by Soviet standards dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia and then brought Marina Vlady to director Viktor Turov's place so as to investigate her Belarusian roots. The pair finally wed on 1 December 1970 (causing furore among the Moscow cultural and political elite) and spent a honeymoon in Georgia. This was the highly productive period for Vysotsky, resulting in numerous new songs, including the anthemic "I Hate" (Я не люблю), sentimental "Lyricale" (Лирическая) and dramatic war epics "He Didn't Return from the Battle" (Он не вернулся из боя) and "The Earth Song" (Песня о Земле) among many others.

 

In 1971 a drinking spree-related nervous breakdown brought Vysotsky to the Moscow Kashchenko clinic [ru]. By this time he has been suffering from alcoholism. Many of his songs from this period deal, either directly or metaphorically, with alcoholism and insanity. Partially recovered (due to the encouraging presence of Marina Vladi), Vysotsky embarked on a successful Ukrainian concert tour and wrote a cluster of new songs. On 29 November 1971 Taganka's Hamlet premiered, a groundbreaking Lyubimov's production with Vysotsky in the leading role, that of a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.

 

Also in 1971 Vysotsky was invited to play the lead in The Sannikov Land, the screen adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's science fiction,[47] which he wrote several songs for, but was suddenly dropped for the reason of his face "being too scandalously recognisable" as a state official put it. One of the songs written for the film, a doom-laden epic allegory "Capricious Horses" (Кони привередливые), became one of the singer's signature tunes. Two of Vysotsky's 1972 film roles were somewhat meditative: an anonymous American journalist in The Fourth One and the "righteous guy" von Koren in The Bad Good Man (based on Anton Chekov's Duel). The latter brought Vysotsky the Best Male Role prize at the V Taormina Film Fest. This philosophical slant rubbed off onto some of his new works of the time: "A Singer at the Microphone" (Певец у микрофона), "The Tightrope Walker" (Канатоходец), two new war songs ("We Spin the Earth", "Black Pea-Coats") and "The Grief" (Беда), a folkish girl's lament, later recorded by Marina Vladi and subsequently covered by several female performers. Popular proved to be his 1972 humorous songs: "Mishka Shifman" (Мишка Шифман), satirizing the leaving-for-Israel routine, "Victim of the Television" which ridiculed the concept of "political consciousness," and "The Honour of the Chess Crown" (Честь шахматной короны) about an ever-fearless "simple Soviet man" challenging the much feared American champion Bobby Fischer to a match.

 

In 1972 he stepped up in Soviet Estonian TV where he presented his songs and gave an interview. The name of the show was "Young Man from Taganka" (Noormees Tagankalt).

 

In April 1973 Vysotsky visited Poland and France. Predictable problems concerning the official permission were sorted after the French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the stellar couple. Having found on return a potentially dangerous lawsuit brought against him (concerning some unsanctioned concerts in Siberia the year before), Vysotsky wrote a defiant letter to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. As a result, he was granted the status of a philharmonic artist, 11.5 roubles per concert now guaranteed. Still the 900 rubles fine had to be paid according to the court verdict, which was a substantial sum, considering his monthly salary at the theater was 110 rubles. That year Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for "Alice in Wonderland," an audioplay where he himself has been given several minor roles. His best known songs of 1973 included "The Others' Track" (Чужая колея), "The Flight Interrupted" (Прерванный полёт) and "The Monument", all pondering on his achievements and legacy.

 

In 1974 Melodiya released the 7" EP, featuring four of Vysotsky's war songs ("He Never Returned From the Battle", "The New Times Song", "Common Graves", and "The Earth Song") which represented a tiny portion of his creative work, owned by millions on tape. In September of that year Vysotsky received his first state award, the Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR following a tour with fellow actors from the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan. A year later he was granted the USSR Union of Cinematographers' membership. This meant he was not an "anti-Soviet scum" now, rather an unlikely link between the official Soviet cinema elite and the "progressive-thinking artists of the West." More films followed, among them The Only Road (a Soviet-Yugoslav joint venture, premiered on 10 January 1975 in Belgrade) and a science fiction movie The Flight of Mr. McKinley (1975). Out of nine ballads that he wrote for the latter only two have made it into the soundtrack. This was the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vysotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Among the songs written at the time, were humorous "The Instruction before the Trip Abroad", lyrical "Of the Dead Pilot" and philosophical "The Strange House". In 1975 Vysotsky made his third trip to France where he rather riskily visited his former tutor (and now a celebrated dissident emigre) Andrey Sinyavsky. Artist Mikhail Shemyakin, his new Paris friend (or a "bottle-sharer", in Vladi's terms), recorded Vysotsky in his home studio. After a brief stay in England Vysotsky crossed the ocean and made his first Mexican concerts in April. Back in Moscow, there were changes at Taganka: Lyubimov went to Milan's La Scala on a contract and Anatoly Efros has been brought in, a director of radically different approach. His project, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, caused a sensation. Critics praised Alla Demidova (as Ranevskaya) and Vysotsky (as Lopakhin) powerful interplay, some describing it as one of the most dazzling in the history of the Soviet theater. Lyubimov, who disliked the piece, accused Efros of giving his actors "the stardom malaise." The 1976 Taganka's visit to Bulgaria resulted in Vysotskys's interview there being filmed and 15 songs recorded by Balkanton record label. On return Lyubimov made a move which many thought outrageous: declaring himself "unable to work with this Mr. Vysotsky anymore" he gave the role of Hamlet to Valery Zolotukhin, the latter's best friend. That was the time, reportedly, when stressed out Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.

 

Another Belorussian voyage completed, Marina and Vladimir went for France and from there (without any official permission given, or asked for) flew to the North America. In New York Vysotsky met, among other people, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky. In a televised one-hour interview with Dan Rather he stressed he was "not a dissident, just an artist, who's never had any intentions to leave his country where people loved him and his songs." At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided as regards the "Vysotsky controversy" up to the highest level; while Mikhail Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, asked him to perform live in his daughter Galina's home, listening to this concert on the telephone. In 1976 appeared "The Domes", "The Rope" and the "Medieval" cycle, including "The Ballad of Love".

 

In September Vysotsky with Taganka made a trip to Yugoslavia where Hamlet won the annual BITEF festival's first prize, and then to Hungary for a two-week concert tour. Back in Moscow Lyubimov's production of The Master & Margarita featured Vysotsky as Ivan Bezdomny; a modest role, somewhat recompensed by an important Svidrigailov slot in Yury Karyakin's take on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Vysotsky's new songs of this period include "The History of Illness" cycle concerning his health problems, humorous "Why Did the Savages Eat Captain Cook", the metaphorical "Ballad of the Truth and the Lie", as well as "Two Fates", the chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches, his two-faced destiny. In 1977 Vysotsky's health deteriorated (heart, kidneys, liver failures, jaw infection and nervous breakdown) to such an extent that in April he found himself in Moscow clinic's reanimation center in the state of physical and mental collapse.

 

In 1977 Vysotsky made an unlikely appearance in New York City on the American television show 60 Minutes, which falsely stated that Vysotsky had spent time in the Soviet prison system, the Gulag. That year saw the release of three Vysotsky's LPs in France (including the one that had been recorded by RCA in Canada the previous year); arranged and accompanied by guitarist Kostya Kazansky, the singer for the first time ever enjoyed the relatively sophisticated musical background. In August he performed in Hollywood before members of New York City film cast and (according to Vladi) was greeted warmly by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Some more concerts in Los Angeles were followed by the appearance at the French Communist paper L’Humanité annual event. In December Taganka left for France, its Hamlet (Vysotsky back in the lead) gaining fine reviews.

 

1978 started with the March–April series of concerts in Moscow and Ukraine. In May Vysotsky embarked upon a new major film project: The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Место встречи изменить нельзя) about two detectives fighting crime in late 1940s Russia, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. The film (premiered on 11 November 1978 on the Soviet Central TV) presented Vysotsky as Zheglov, a ruthless and charismatic cop teaching his milder partner Sharapov (actor Vladimir Konkin) his art of crime-solving. Vysotsky also became engaged in Taganka's Genre-seeking show (performing some of his own songs) and played Aleksander Blok in Anatoly Efros' The Lady Stranger (Незнакомка) radio play (premiered on air on 10 July 1979 and later released as a double LP).

 

In November 1978 Vysotsky took part in the underground censorship-defying literary project Metropolis, inspired and organized by Vasily Aksenov. In January 1979 Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts. That was the point (according to biographer Vladimir Novikov) when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities. What followed though, was a return to the self-destructive theater and concert tours schedule, personal doctor Anatoly Fedotov now not only his companion, but part of Taganka's crew. "Who was this Anatoly? Just a man who in every possible situation would try to provide drugs. And he did provide. In such moments Volodya trusted him totally," Oksana Afanasyeva, Vysotsky's Moscow girlfriend (who was near him for most of the last year of his life and, on occasion, herself served as a drug courier) remembered. In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov (who injected caffeine into the heart directly), colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage. In January 1980 Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave. "Up to you, but on condition that Hamlet is yours," was the answer. The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry. Still, of nearly 800 poems by Vysotsky only one has been published in the Soviet Union while he was alive. Not a single performance or interview was broadcast by the Soviet television in his lifetime.

 

In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter. While recording, Vysotsky made a few attempts to speak English, trying to overcome the language barrier. This video letter never reached Beatty. It was broadcast for the first time more than three decades later, on the night of 24 January 2013 (local time) by Rossiya 1 channel, along with records of TV channels of Italy, Mexico, Poland, USA and from private collections, in Vladimir Vysotsky. A letter to Warren Beatty film by Alexander Kovanovsky and Igor Rakhmanov. While recording this video, Vysotsky had a rare opportunity to perform for a camera, being still unable to do it with Soviet television.

 

On 22 January 1980, Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television. What proved to be an exhausting affair (his concentration lacking, he had to plod through several takes for each song) was premiered on the Soviet TV eight years later. The last six months of his life saw Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol. His performances were often erratic. Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic. Yet he kept writing, mostly poetry and even prose, but songs as well. The last song he performed was the agonizing "My Sorrow, My Anguish" and his final poem, written one week prior to his death was "A Letter to Marina": "I'm less than fifty, but the time is short / By you and God protected, life and limb / I have a song or two to sing before the Lord / I have a way to make my peace with him."

 

Although several theories of the ultimate cause of the singer's death persist to this day, given what is now known about cardiovascular disease, it seems likely that by the time of his death Vysotsky had an advanced coronary condition brought about by years of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as his grueling work schedule and the stress of the constant harassment by the government. Towards the end, most of Vysotsky's closest friends had become aware of the ominous signs and were convinced that his demise was only a matter of time. Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech. Accounts by Vysotsky's close friends and colleagues concerning his last hours were compiled in the book by V. Perevozchikov.

 

Vysotsky suffered from alcoholism for most of his life. Sometime around 1977, he started using amphetamines and other prescription narcotics in an attempt to counteract the debilitating hangovers and eventually to rid himself of alcohol addiction. While these attempts were partially successful, he ended up trading alcoholism for a severe drug dependency that was fast spiralling out of control. He was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection. On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.

 

Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction. He underwent an experimental (and ultimately discredited) blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow. He also went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs. After these attempts failed, Vysotsky returned to Moscow to find his life in an increasingly stressful state of disarray. He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty). He also unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton. Relations with his wife Marina were deteriorating, and he was torn between his loyalty to her and his love for his mistress Oksana Afanasyeva. He had also developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.

 

In a final desperate attempt to overcome his drug addiction, partially prompted by his inability to obtain drugs through his usual channels (the authorities had imposed a strict monitoring of the medical institutions to prevent illicit drug distribution during the 1980 Olympics), he relapsed into alcohol and went on a prolonged drinking binge (apparently consuming copious amounts of champagne due to a prevalent misconception at the time that it was better than vodka at countering the effects of drug withdrawal).

 

On 3 July 1980, Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall. One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts. On 16 July Vysotsky gave his last public concert in Kaliningrad. On 18 July, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time at the Taganka Theatre. From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink. The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy. At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved. On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up. But soon thereafter, Oksana Afanasyeva saw him clench his chest several times, which led her to suspect that he was genuinely suffering from a cardiovascular condition. She informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night. In the evening, after drinking relatively small amounts of alcohol, the moaning and groaning Vysotsky was sedated by Fedotov, who then sat down on the couch next to him but fell asleep. Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified. This was contradicted by Fedotov's colleagues, Sklifosovsky Emergency Medical Institute physicians L. Sul'povar and S. Scherbakov (who had demanded the actor's immediate hospitalization on 23 July but were allegedly rebuffed by Fedotov), who insisted that Fedotov's incompetent sedation combined with alcohol was what killed Vysotsky. An autopsy was prevented by Vysotsky's parents (who were eager to have their son's drug addiction remain secret), so the true cause of death remains unknown.

 

No official announcement of the actor's death was made, only a brief obituary appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, and a note informing of Vysotsky's death and cancellation of the Hamlet performance was put out at the entrance to the Taganka Theatre (the story goes that not a single ticket holder took advantage of the refund offer). Despite this, by the end of the day, millions had learned of Vysotsky's death. On 28 July, he lay in state at the Taganka Theatre. After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.

 

According to author Valery Perevozchikov part of the blame for his death lay with the group of associates who surrounded him in the last years of his life. This inner circle were all people under the influence of his strong character, combined with a material interest in the large sums of money his concerts earned. This list included Valerii Yankelovich, manager of the Taganka Theatre and prime organiser of his non-sanctioned concerts; Anatoly Fedotov, his personal doctor; Vadim Tumanov, gold prospector (and personal friend) from Siberia; Oksana Afanasyeva (later Yarmolnik), his mistress the last three years of his life; Ivan Bortnik, a fellow actor; and Leonid Sul'povar, a department head at the Sklifosovski hospital who was responsible for much of the supply of drugs.

 

Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life. Under their influence, he was able to continue to perform all over the country, up to a week before his death. Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary. The payouts and gathering of money were a constant source of danger, and Yankelovich and others were needed to organise them.

 

Some money went to Vysotsky, the rest was distributed amongst this circle. At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vysotsky going became unmanageable. This culminated at the time of the Moscow Olympics which coincided with the last days of his life, when supplies of drugs were monitored more strictly than usual, and some of the doctors involved in supplying Vysotsky were already behind bars (normally the doctors had to account for every ampule, thus drugs were transferred to an empty container, while the patients received a substitute or placebo instead). In the last few days Vysotsky became uncontrollable, his shouting could be heard all over the apartment building on Malaya Gruzinskaya St. where he lived amongst VIP's. Several days before his death, in a state of stupor he went on a high speed drive around Moscow in an attempt to obtain drugs and alcohol – when many high-ranking people saw him. This increased the likelihood of him being forcibly admitted to the hospital, and the consequent danger to the circle supplying his habit. As his state of health declined, and it became obvious that he might die, his associates gathered to decide what to do with him. They came up with no firm decision. They did not want him admitted officially, as his drug addiction would become public and they would fall under suspicion, although some of them admitted that any ordinary person in his condition would have been admitted immediately.

 

On Vysotsky's death his associates and relatives put in much effort to prevent a post-mortem being carried out. This despite the fairly unusual circumstances: he died aged 42 under heavy sedation with an improvised cocktail of sedatives and stimulants, including the toxic chloral hydrate, provided by his personal doctor who had been supplying him with narcotics the previous three years. This doctor, being the only one present at his side when death occurred, had a few days earlier been seen to display elementary negligence in treating the sedated Vysotsky. On the night of his death, Arkadii Vysotsky (his son), who tried to visit his father in his apartment, was rudely refused entry by Yankelovich, even though there was a lack of people able to care for him. Subsequently, the Soviet police commenced a manslaughter investigation which was dropped due to the absence of evidence taken at the time of death.

 

Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. They met in 1956, being both MAT theater institute students, lived for some time at Vysotsky's mother's flat in Moscow, after her graduation (Iza was 2 years older) spent months in different cities (her – in Kiev, then Rostov) and finally married on 25 April 1960.

 

He met his second wife Lyudmila Abramova in 1961, while shooting the film 713 Requests Permission to Land. They married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady (born 1962) and Nikita (born 1964).

 

While still married to Lyudmila Abramova, Vysotsky began a romantic relationship with Tatyana Ivanenko, a Taganka actress, then, in 1967 fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had three children, while Vladimir had two. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.

 

In the autumn of 1981 Vysotsky's first collection of poetry was officially published in the USSR, called The Nerve (Нерв). Its first edition (25,000 copies) was sold out instantly. In 1982 the second one followed (100,000), then the 3rd (1988, 200,000), followed in the 1990s by several more. The material for it was compiled by Robert Rozhdestvensky, an officially laurelled Soviet poet. Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.

 

In 1982 the motion picture The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe was produced in the Soviet Union and in 1983 the movie was released to the public. Four songs by Vysotsky were featured in the film.

 

In 1986 the official Vysotsky poetic heritage committee was formed (with Robert Rozhdestvensky at the helm, theater critic Natalya Krymova being both the instigator and the organizer). Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize. The official formula – "for creating the character of Zheglov and artistic achievements as a singer-songwriter" was much derided from both the left and the right. In 1988 the Selected Works of... (edited by N. Krymova) compilation was published, preceded by I Will Surely Return... (Я, конечно, вернусь...) book of fellow actors' memoirs and Vysotsky's verses, some published for the first time. In 1990 two volumes of extensive The Works of... were published, financed by the late poet's father Semyon Vysotsky. Even more ambitious publication series, self-proclaimed "the first ever academical edition" (the latter assertion being dismissed by sceptics) compiled and edited by Sergey Zhiltsov, were published in Tula (1994–1998, 5 volumes), Germany (1994, 7 volumes) and Moscow (1997, 4 volumes).

 

In 1989 the official Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant (edited by Sergey Zaitsev) devoted entirely to Vysotsky's legacy. In 1996 it became an independent publication and was closed in 2002.

 

In the years to come, Vysotsky's grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations of his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tombstone also became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue. Although probably too solemn to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life.

 

In 1995 in Moscow the Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates. Among those present were the bard's parents, two of his sons, first wife Iza, renown poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky. "Vysotsky had always been telling the truth. Only once he was wrong when he sang in one of his songs: 'They will never erect me a monument in a square like that by Petrovskye Vorota'", Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov said in his speech.[95] A further monument to Vysotsky was erected in 2014 at Rostov-on-Don.

 

In October 2004, a monument to Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge. His son, Nikita Vysotsky, attended the unveiling. The statue was designed by Russian sculptor Alexander Taratinov, who also designed a monument to Alexander Pushkin in Podgorica. The bronze statue shows Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar. Next to the figure lies a bronze skull – a reference to Vysotsky's monumental lead performances in Shakespeare's Hamlet. On the pedestal the last lines from a poem of Vysotsky's, dedicated to Montenegro, are carved.

 

The Vysotsky business center & semi-skyscraper was officially opened in Yekaterinburg, in 2011. It is the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, has 54 floors, total height: 188.3 m (618 ft). On the third floor of the business center is the Vysotsky Museum. Behind the building is a bronze sculpture of Vladimir Vysotsky and his third wife, a French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 2011 a controversial movie Vysotsky. Thank You For Being Alive was released, script written by his son, Nikita Vysotsky. The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects. The film tells about Vysotsky's illegal underground performances, problems with KGB and drugs, and subsequent clinical death in 1979.

 

Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian bards started writing songs and poems about his life and death. The best known are Yuri Vizbor's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski based some of his songs on those of Vysotsky, such as his first song (1977) was based on "The Wolfhunt", and dedicated to his memory the song "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" ("Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky").

 

Every year on Vysotsky's birthday festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Wolf Biermann in Germany, Bob Dylan in America, or Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel in France.

 

The asteroid 2374 Vladvysotskij, discovered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva, was named after Vysotsky.

 

During the Annual Q&A Event Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, Alexey Venediktov asked Putin to name a street in Moscow after the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who, though considered one of the greatest Russian artists, has no street named after him in Moscow almost 30 years after his death. Venediktov stated a Russian law that allowed the President to do so and promote a law suggestion to name a street by decree. Putin answered that he would talk to Mayor of Moscow and would solve this problem. In July 2015 former Upper and Lower Tagansky Dead-ends (Верхний и Нижний Таганские тупики) in Moscow were reorganized into Vladimir Vysotsky Street.

 

The Sata Kieli Cultural Association, [Finland], organizes the annual International Vladimir Vysotsky Festival (Vysotski Fest), where Vysotsky's singers from different countries perform in Helsinki and other Finnish cities. They sing Vysotsky in different languages and in different arrangements.

 

Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

 

Throughout his lengthy musical career, Jaromír Nohavica, a famed Czech singer, translated and performed numerous songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, most notably Песня о друге (Píseň o příteli – Song about a friend).

 

The Museum of Vladimir Vysotsky in Koszalin dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky was founded by Marlena Zimna (1969–2016) in May 1994, in her apartment, in the city of Koszalin, in Poland. Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. A special place in the collection holds a Vladimir Vysotsky's guitar, on which he played at a concert in Casablanca in April 1976. Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph (an extract from Vladimir Vysotsky's song "What Happened in Africa"), written in Russian right on the guitar.

 

In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture. Author Vladimir Chebotarev.

 

After her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret, Marina Vlady wrote a book called The Aborted Flight about her years together with Vysotsky. The book paid tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet was uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused in their marriage. Written in French (and published in France in 1987), it was translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator and came out in 1989 in the USSR. Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship (or rather, the lack of any), implying that Vysotsky-senior (while his son was alive) was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB. Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love. Among other publications of note were Valery Zolotukhin's Vysotsky's Secret (2000), a series of Valery Perevozchikov's books (His Dying Hour, The Unknown Vysotsky and others) containing detailed accounts and interviews dealing with the bard's life's major controversies (the mystery surrounding his death, the truth behind Vysotsky Sr.'s alleged KGB reports, the true nature of Vladimir Vysotsky's relations with his mother Nina's second husband Georgy Bartosh etc.), Iza Zhukova's Short Happiness for a Lifetime and the late bard's sister-in-law Irena Vysotskaya's My Brother Vysotsky. The Beginnings (both 2005).

 

A group of enthusiasts has created a non-profit project – the mobile application "Vysotsky"

 

The multifaceted talent of Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" (бард) that Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and poet rather than a singer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." With the advent of portable tape-recorders in the Soviet Union, Vysotsky's music became available to the masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings (later on cassette tapes).

 

Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition. He was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France, he has been compared with Georges Brassens; in Russia, however, he was more frequently compared with Joe Dassin, partly because they were the same age and died in the same year, although their ideologies, biographies, and musical styles are very different. Vysotsky's lyrics and style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski, a Polish songwriter and singer who touched on similar themes.

 

The songs – over 600 of them – were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were blatnaya pesnya ("outlaw songs"). These songs were based either on the life of the common people in Moscow or on life in the crime people, sometimes in Gulag. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These war songs were not written to glorify war, but rather to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life-threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs.

 

Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, although he is almost never the narrator. When singing his criminal songs, he would adopt the accent and intonation of a Moscow thief, and when singing war songs, he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. In many of his philosophical songs, he adopted the role of inanimate objects. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet played his role so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was, indeed, a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that "War veterans thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them." The same could be said about mountain climbers; on multiple occasions, Vysotsky was sent pictures of mountain climbers' graves with quotes from his lyrics etched on the tombstones.

 

Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed wherever and whenever he could – in the theater (where he worked), at universities, in private apartments, village clubs, and in the open air. It was not unusual for him to give several concerts in one day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. With few exceptions, he wasn't allowed to publish his recordings with "Melodiya", which held a monopoly on the Soviet music industry. His songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity. Cosmonauts even took his music on cassette into orbit.

 

Musically, virtually all of Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords. Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning. This guitar, with its specific Russian tuning, makes a slight yet notable difference in chord voicings than the standard tuned six string Spanish (classical) guitar, and it became a staple of his sound. Because Vysotsky tuned down a tone and a half, his strings had less tension, which also colored the sound.

 

His earliest songs were usually written in C minor (with the guitar tuned a tone down from DGBDGBD to CFACFAC)

 

Songs written in this key include "Stars" (Zvyozdy), "My friend left for Magadan" (Moy drug uyekhal v Magadan), and most of his "outlaw songs".

 

At around 1970, Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor (guitar tuned to CFACFAC), which he continued doing until his death.

 

Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing. He used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques. One of his favorite was to play an alternating bass with his thumb as he plucked or strummed with his other fingers.

 

Often, Vysotsky would neglect to check the tuning of his guitar, which is particularly noticeable on earlier recordings. According to some accounts, Vysotsky would get upset when friends would attempt to tune his guitar, leading some to believe that he preferred to play slightly out of tune as a stylistic choice. Much of this is also attributable to the fact that a guitar that is tuned down more than 1 whole step (Vysotsky would sometimes tune as much as 2 and a half steps down) is prone to intonation problems.

 

Vysotsky had a unique singing style. He had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs. So when a syllable is sung for a prolonged period of time, he would elongate the consonant instead of the vowel in that syllable.

Margolies, John,, photographer.

 

Miss Bellows Falls Diner, side view, Bellows Falls, Vermont

 

1978.

 

1 photograph : color transparency ; 35 mm (slide format).

 

Notes:

Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.

Margolies categories: Diners; Eating & drinking establishments: (roadside and Main Street).

Please use digital image: original slide is kept in cold storage for preservation.

Credit line: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Purchase; John Margolies 2007 (DLC/PP-2007:125).

Forms part of: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008).

 

Subjects:

Diners (Restaurants)--1970-1980.

United States--Vermont--Bellows Falls.

 

Format: Slides--1970-1980.--Color

 

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication. For more information, see "John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive - Rights and Restrictions Information" www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/723_marg.html

 

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

 

Part Of: Margolies, John John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (DLC) 2010650110

 

General information about the John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.mrg

 

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/mrg.00102

 

Call Number: LC-MA05- 102

  

Bristol Britannia 312 XX367 'Team Spirit' of the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment based at Boscombe Down parked at RIAT at RAF Greenham Common in July 1983. Built for BOAC as G-AOVM in 1957 she flew with the A&AEE between 1971 and 1983 and ended her days in Africa, finally being scrapped in 1994 (copied slide)

Historical Background. Edward Gibbon Wakefield established the New Zealand Company to settle the land in 1839 just after the establishment of SA. He began his settlements in Wellington with his brother in charge, followed by later settlements in Whanganui, New Plymouth and Nelson. He also established the Canterbury Association with Robert Godley for the settlement of Christchurch in 1848. NZ was established as a serious of very separate settlements and the major cities of NZ today reflect that early history. His original Wellington settlement covered the area from Wellington to Napier and Hastings. Napier was a favoured spot in the Hawkes Bay region (named by Captain Cook in 1769) as it had a good port. The Crown purchased land from the Maoris in 1851 in Hawkes Bay. Before this purchase in 1851 William Colenso, a Cornishman had established a mission station here to work with the Maori in 1844. He was dismissed from the Missionary Society in 1852 as he had fathered a child with their Maori maid in 1850.His wife separated from him in 1853 but they never divorced. Colenso stayed on as a settler in Hawkes Bay. He became a MP for Napier in the national parliament in 1861. The illegitimate son Wiremu left NZ when he grew up and returned to live in Cornwall. A few settlers began to arrive in Hawks Bay around 1852 and in 1854 a town named Napier was laid out. It was named after Sir Charles Napier the British Army Commander in Chief in India who had died in 1853. As more settlers came to Hawkes Bay in the mid-1850s a public meeting in Napier moved to separate from the province of Wellington which they did in 1858. The port and the rich agricultural lands of Hawkes Bay provided wealth to the city of Napier. The region was known as a major export port of NZ wool. More recently it has become known as the fruit bowl on NZ. It produces kiwi fruits, grapes (for wine), stone fruits etc. Timber is also exported from the port of Napier. Just a few kilometres away is the city of Hastings. Napier has around 62,000 inhabitants and Hastings 80,000. The district has 165,000 residents.

 

The coastal flood plains are traversed by five rivers flowing down from the central tablelands and volcanic area. The major river is the Wairoa River. Hawkes Bay is a very seismically active region of NZ with over 50 damaging earthquakes recorded since 1800 but only 6 of these have occurred since 1934. The early 1930s was a dramatic period for Hawkes Bay. A major earthquake occurred on 3rd February 1931 followed by subsequent earthquakes over the next three years. The 7.8 scale earthquake of 1931 was centred 15 kilometres from Napier. It struck mid-morning and killed 256 people and injured thousands with over 400 hundred admitted to hospital. Hundreds of aftershocks resulted. It remains NZ worst earthquake eclipsing even the more recent Christchurch earthquakes for damage and death. Most of the buildings of the city centres of Napier and Hastings were destroyed. Hawkes Bay lies almost directly on the fault line caused by the abutting of the Australia and Pacific tectonic plates. The coastline at Napier was raised two metres with 40 square kilometres of seabed being raised to create dry land! A 4,000 acre lagoon was drained and today Hawkes Bay airport, industrial estates and new housing lies on this reclaimed land. The earthquake set off fires (and many buildings were made of wood) and the fires raged for several day destroying what was left of some buildings. Fires were controlled very quickly in Hastings. The two cities were quite quickly rebuilt with government support within two years at the height of the Depression. Building regulations were changed and well-known architects rebuilt the cities in Art Deco style influenced by the rise of California with its Aztec and Spanish influenced Art Deco architecture. Even today there are only four specially designed buildings taller than five storeys in Napier. On a more positive note Napier decided to prosper from the earthquake and its Art Deco heritage. The Art Deco Trust was formed in 1985 and still operates an internationally recognised Art Deco festival each year in February. With local government support the Art Deco Trust employs 10 people and uses the services of 120 volunteers. It operates a shop, it runs tours, it turns over more than $1.5 a year and it prints publications etc. It encourages the preservation of Napier’s Art Deco buildings and helps with restoration. It attracts around 25,000 people to Napier each year. Citizens of Napier dress in 1930s style for the Festival, vintage cars from the era are part of the festival, a public great Gatsby arty is held in a city park, movie events, art shows, many jazz musical events, balls, dinners, parades, and an Art Deco spotter competition are all part of the festival. The Art Deco Trust shop opens all year selling 1930s hats, women’s’ fashion, jewellery, Art Deco style statues, glassware, china, books, posters etc. Among the 200 events is the Art Deco Dog Parade. I wonder what that is?

 

What is special about Napier and Art Deco? Art Deco as a design and architectural style emerged at the Paris Exhibition of 1925. It became popular throughout the 1920s, 1930s and even into the 1940s. The style was applied to buildings, especially American skyscrapers, jewellery, china, lighting, furniture, etc. Unlike the Art Nouveau style which had emerged around 1900 with colours, curves and flowing detail the Art Deco style was rectangular, geometric and modern industrial techniques were used to achieve this style doing away with handicraft and hand worked items. Just think of the designs used in the Poirot detective TV series from Agatha Christie. The designers drew their inspirations from old European, Mayan, Aztec, and in the case of New Zealand, Maori design elements. The European influences led to the Spanish Mission style of architecture with simulated adobe brick, rounded terracotta window shades, roof tiles, roof parapets etc. The American influences developed Mayan and Aztec and sometimes North American Indian elements with zigzags, stepped patterns etc. One special feature of Art Deco buildings was the colourful and soft pastel shades of varying depths of colour used on the decorative features. Art Deco buildings can be found across the world with many in Adelaide but unlike Napier there is no concentration of buildings in any one area and they have not been maintained since the 1930s. Art Deco buildings in Adelaide no longer have some of the design elements as they have been removed with modernisation, the colour schemes have been painted out and often replaced with current gaudy or grey colour schemes designed to hide the Art Deco elements. But several country towns in SA have many Art Deco buildings as they were being built and developed in the early 1930s – for example, Barmera and Renmark in the Riverland. Art Deco was popular for 1930s hotels in Adelaide and suburbs and Art Deco, especially the Spanish Mission style was popular for domestic housing in the 1930s. Napier, along with Miami in Florida and Santa Barbara in California have concentrations of Art Deco buildings, but Miami has especially grand multi storey buildings in the Art Deco style that you do not find in Napier. Napier Art Deco Trust applied for UNESCO World Heritage status for the city and its Art Deco heritage but this was rejected. Napier is special because of the earthquake behind the erection of the Art Deco buildings and the use of Maori motifs in some of its buildings.

 

Within days of the earthquake the NZ government established a Rehabilitation Committee and all houses could have one chimney repaired free of charge before residents re-occupied their homes. The government loaned money to start the rebuilding of commercial premises (but not to banks or international companies) near Civic Square. Loans were granted interest free for up to three years for commercial businesses. Two government Commissioners were appointed to oversee works and loans. They immediately contacted some Napier architects. The architects sought out ideas from American architectural pattern books and photographs and the five leading architectural practices agreed to share their limited resources and to rebuild with the city with a sense of unity and common style. The leading architectural firms were Finch and Westerholm who specialised in Spanish Mission style; Louis Hay a local who was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright in America and his best building was the National Tobacco Company building; Natusch & Sons who specialised in houses and restrained Art Deco style; E A Williams who produced some quite flamboyant buildings; and J T Watson who became the Napier Borough Architect and is known for the Colonnade, Sunbay, Parker Fountain, esplanade Soundshell and the Egyptian inspired Municipal Theatre. Most of the central business district of Napier was rebuilt within two years although Art Deco buildings were still being erected in the late 1930s.

 

Napier’s Art Deco buildings and Trail.

National Tobacco Company. Corner of Ossian and Bridge St. We stop here on the way to the city centre. Stunning entrance with fantastic detail in sculpted plaster – roses, sunbursts, fruit etc. It was built in 1832 and the architect was Louis Hay. No expense was spared on this structure. Note the rounded “rising sun” style doorway, with motifs below the roof parapet, roses beside the wooden doors, almost nautical style lights beside the arched doorway, symmetrical steps, and the bold horizontal lines in the cement work below the height of the doorhandles. A brilliant building in the Art Deco style.

  

We start at the corner of Marine Parade and Emerson Street- the mall. The parallel street to the north is Tennyson St; from Marine Parade the first cross street is Hastings St; the next cross street is Dalton St. At the end of Emerson St just off the map below is Civic Square Park. The Napier Art Deco Historic Trust is located near Civic Square. We begin along Emerson Street Mall. You will note that central Napier streets are named after literary figures, Emerson from the USA, Tennyson, Dickens, Shakespeare, Browning from England etc.

  

1. T and G (Temperance and General) Building with the rounded tower and clock. Built in 1936. City landmark. Built in the Art Deco nautical style as it is on the esplanade. It is now a boutique hotel. Across Marine Parade is the 1936 Colonnade – memorial to those killed in the 1931 earthquake and the Soundshell built in 1935 has some Maori motifs on it. A good example of the work of J T Watson, Borough Architect.

2. The Masonic Hotel on the right. Note the Art Deco style lettering of Masonic. Built in 1932 and looked modern then as it does today. Very rectangular. Parapet hides roof line. Architects from Wellington.

3. ASB Bank next to T & G. Built 1932. Has best examples of Maori carving, Maori patterns in ceiling panels, exterior Maori bas reliefs and Maori designs on parapet. Note Art Deco external lighting between the vertical pilasters. Top of pilaster has Maori design. Turn left here into Hastings St and look at buildings on left.

4. (i) – Jessica’s Design – 1932, originally a drapers, Art Deco entrance. Beautiful pas or is it Maori?

4 (iii) – former Odeon Theatre – 1930s, burn and renovated 1950s. Old Art Deco stained glass in window. Stepped design around the central gable piece.

4 (iv) - Callinicos Building 1932 with Greek gods motifs naturally. Now a Farmers Dept. Store.

4(v) - Paxies Building 1932 – Spanish Mission style. Very unusual cartouche on shop front. Architects Finch and Westerholm. Cross to the other side of Hastings St return to Emerson St.

4(vi) – Built 1931 before quake as Post Office but in the Art Deco style. Burn out in the quake and rebuilt. Remodelled in 1950s. Now the Farmers Dept. Store.

4(vii) –Two doors up from Farmers. Bennett’s Building -1929 – a quake survivor. Built with floating foundation and reinforced concrete. Stripped classical style not Art Deco at all.

4 (viii) – Originally Blythes Department Store. Built in 1933. Architects were Natusch and Sons. Pink and green colours, roof parapet. Note little triangle shapes in the tops of the windows.

5 On right in Emerson St. Criterion Hotel - 1932- largest Spanish Mission building in town. Concrete walls look like adobe. Note triangular shapes in the ground floor windows. Stepped up entrance in veranda is so geometric.

6. On left – Hannah’s Building now a small shoe store – 1933. Note linked chain beneath parapet, flower motif on end columns. Modernise with grey paint work and some pink.

7. On left – Blythe’s building – 1933. Façade was covered at one stage. Not much left except V shapes and stylised fleur de lis along roof parapet.

8. On left –McGruer’s building – 1932 – department store – note unusual balcony and wrought iron work.

9. On right –Hawke’s Bay Chambers - 1932 quintessential Art Deco – zigzags, herring bone, and monogram – stylish.

10. On left. Emerson Building. Blue on blue. Built as Hurst Building in 1930 before the earthquake. Owner photographed it in the hour after the quake before the fires started.

11. On right Smith and Chambers Building 1932 with unusual 6 sided windows. Best feature is the zigzags below parapet with “rising sun” in the zags and stepped squares below in the zags.

12. On left. Lockyer’s Building. Beautiful chevron shaped columns painted in appropriate Art Deco pastel colours.

13. On right Briasco’s Building. Built 1930 before the quake. Architect E A Williams. It is said that this is restrained but his buildings after the quake are more dynamic and exuberant. Possible Maori motifs below the parapet.

14. On right. Kidson’s Corner Building. Built 1933. One of the best buildings in Napier. It has zigzag friezes, beautiful colour palette, and triangular pieces in rectangular windows etc. Turn left here into Dalton St.

 

15 (i). On right of Dalton is the former Hotel Central. Architect E A Williams and built in 1932. A grand building with highly decorative motifs around the hotel windows. Egyptian inspired motifs with sunbursts or “rising suns” and zigzag borders. Balustrades on balconies, pink and cream palette.

15 (ii). On left, Masson House. Built 1932 by E A Williams again. Central panel above the central doorway is interesting with the M and H for Masson House.

15 (iii). On left is a stripped classical building which is not Art Deco. NZ Broadcasting house was built in 1926 also by E A Williams. It survived the earthquake.

15 (iv) On the diagonally opposite corner. The former State Cinema built in 1932 with Finch & Westerholm as architects. Now an Asian café. Striking colour scheme of pink and grey, rounded windows with sunbursts in the top rounded bits. It has a classical feel about it.

16. On right is Colenso (he was the first missionary settler) Building. Built in 1932 as a hotel now apartments. The end window segments with tripartite windows are the best features. Yellow and ochre type colours.

17. On left. Loo Key Building. Architect J T Watson. Built later in Art Deco style in 1940. The central stepped feature is quaint. The unnamed building next door has great friezes and motifs.

18. On right. Sangs Building 1932. Very plain with unusual shaped parapet with a slope. Its claim to fame are the beautiful grey toned Aztec motif panels on ends and the wavy motif panel in the middle of the façade. Worth more than a glance.

19. On right corner. The Provincial Hotel by architects Finch and Westerholm in 1932. Superb example of Spanish Mission style with not a full rounded roof tile in sight except for half bits along the parapet. Rounded windows with twist pile columns. Dominating colour palette from cream to blue to orange. Turn right here into Civic Square.

20. Straight ahead is the old Central Fire Station building. Designed by Louis Hay in 1932. Concrete façade with some Art Deco features. Turn right at the corner a walk along Tennyson Street.

21. On the left. The Municipal Theatre. Architect J t Watson the Borough Architect. Built 1938. Note the good symmetry; the flame lighting in the external walls, the lintels above the theatre entrance doors are very Egyptian, through the doors you can see the nautical design inside, chrome, neon lights etc.

22. On right on next corner. The classical designed Public Trust Office for dealing with deceased estates entrusted to it. Built in 1922. Survived the quake almost unscathed. Sold by the government in the 1990s.

23. On right. Hildebrandt’s. Built 1933 with Louis Hay the architect. Note the wavy lines in blue. Meant to represent the waves between Hildebrandt’s native Germany and his adopted home of New Zealand.

24. On right. Halsbury Chambers built in 1932 and designed by Louis Hay. Simple, small and restrained. Central doorway with torchlike motif in the middle is interesting. Good Art Deco style lettering for Halsbury Chambers.

25. On left. Scinde Building. 1932. A stripped classical building with dominant pilasters but also with Art Deco motifs along the roof parapet and then almost Art Nouveau decorations in cartouches above and below the windows. A mixed style building but pleasant.

26. On left. Napier Antique centre. Built in 1932 and designed by E A Williams. Has the best Maori motifs in Napier .

27. On left. Hello Superman and Lois Lane. The Daily Telegraph building completed in 1932 and deigned by E A Williams. Look at the top of the pilasters- so Art Deco. Note the external lighting; the zigzags on the wrought iron balcony above the main door; the nautical style central part of the building with the flag flying above; and the stepped lines around the main entrance doors. Cross over Hastings Street.

28. On the left. The Art Deco Shop and centre.

29. On the next corner is the Museum and Art Gallery. Admission is free. Learn more about the earthquake, the history of Napier and explore the Art Deco china (including Clarice Cliff), paintings (early New Zealand Modernism 1925 to 1950), textiles and sculpture of the museum. The museum has a good collection of Maori and ethnographic exhibits. It has an excellent shop for arts and crafts and souvenirs. Beyond that is the esplanade again. Turn right and you will be back at the T & G Building.

 

Hastings. In 1873 the government planned a railway inland from Napier and laid out a new town at a rail junction to be called Hastings. The railway opened up the interior land to the Napier port at Ahuriri. These days Hastings is slightly bigger than Napier and it is the regional district council. Hastings has a rail link to Palmerston North. Like Napier the 1931 earthquake destroyed many city centre buildings which were replaced with iconic Art Deco buildings. Like Napier it is a popular place to reside as it is one of the sunniest parts of New Zealand. In its Civic Square are 18 pouwhenua. Pouwhenua are artistically carved post to mark Maori places of significance or iwi boundaries. A team of 20 Maori carvers created them from totara trees. Each pou tells the story of the genealogy of each Marae represented. The pou represent the link between the people (tangata) and the land (whenua.) Each pou represents one Maori ancestor. If we have time we will briefly stop at Stoneycroft homestead and gardens. Built 1875. Owned by the City. Near corner of Napier-Hastings expressway and Omahu Rd. Turn left when coming from Napier.

 

মা দুর্গা (Durga;Sanskrit: दुर्गा, meaning "the inaccessible" or "the invincible")

The four day long (Saptami to Dashami) Durga Puja is the biggest annual festival in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, and Assam. It is celebrated likewise with much fervour in other parts of India, especially the Himalayan region, but is celebrated in various forms throughout the Hindu universe.

 

The day of Durga's victory is celebrated as Vijayadashami (Bengali).

 

The actual period of the worship however may be on the preceding nine days (Navaratri) followed by the last day called Vijayadashami in North India or five days in Bengal (from the sixth to tenth day of the waxing-moon fortnight). Nine aspects of Durga known as Navadurga are meditated upon, one by one during the nine-day festival by devout Shakti worshippers

 

Proposals for a university in Queensland began in the 1870s. A Royal Commission in 1874, chaired by Sir Charles Lilley, recommended the immediate establishment of a university. Those against a university argued that technical rather than academic education was more important in an economy dominated by primary industry. Those in favour of the university, in the face of this opposition, distanced themselves from Oxford and Cambridge and proposed instead a model derived from the mid-western states of the USA. A second Royal Commission in 1891 recommended the inclusion of five faculties in a new university; Arts, Law, Medicine, Science and Applied Science. Education generally was given a low priority in Queensland's budgets, and in a colony with a literacy rate of 57% in 1861, primary education was the first concern well ahead of secondary and technical education. The government, despite the findings of the Royal Commissions, was unwilling to commit funds to the establishment of a university.

 

In 1893 the Queensland University Extension Movement was begun by a group of private individuals who organised public lecture courses in adult education, hoping to excite wider community support for a university in Queensland. In 1894, 245 students were enrolled in the extension classes and the lectures were described as practical and useful. In 1906 the University Extension Movement staged the University Congress, a forum for interested delegates to promote the idea of a university. Opinion was mobilised, a fund was started, and a draft Bill for a Queensland University was prepared. Stress was laid on the practical aspects of university education and its importance for the commerce of Queensland. The proceedings of the Congress were forwarded to Premier Kidston. In October 1906, sixty acres in Victoria Park were gazetted for university purposes.

 

The University of Queensland was established by an Act of State Parliament on the 10th of December 1909 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Queensland's separation from the colony of New South Wales. The Act allowed for the university to be governed by a senate of 20 men and Sir William MacGregor, the incoming Governor, was appointed the first chancellor with RH Roe as the vice chancellor. Old Government House in George Street was set aside for the University following the departure of the Governor to the Bardon residence, Fernberg, sparking the first debates about the best location for the university.

 

In 1910 the first teaching faculties were created. These included Engineering, Classics, Mathematics, and Chemistry. In December of the same year, the Senate appointed the first four professors; BD Steele in chemistry, JL Michie in classics, H. Priestly in mathematics and A Gibson in engineering. In 1911 the first students enrolled.

 

Practically from the start there was controversy about a permanent site for the University. Old Government House was too small and was seen by many as evidence merely of government parsimony. There was not much room for expansion and there were conflicts with the neighbouring Brisbane Central Technical College. Victoria Park had been chosen in 1906 for a permanent site and in 1922 a further 170 acres were vested in the University. The high cost of preparing the steeply sloping land at Victoria Park for building made it a less than ideal site despite its central location and proximity to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Yeronga Park and Saint Lucia were considered as options. But in 1926 the whole issue was transformed when Doctor James O'Neil Mayne and Miss Mary Emilia Mayne made £50,000 available to the Brisbane City Council to resume land at Saint Lucia and present it to the University. Opinion was divided with Professor Steele and many members of the medical profession against Saint Lucia because of its isolation and lack of public transport. A meeting of the Senate, on the 10th of December, voted for the Saint Lucia site on the condition that the city council provided access. Those voting for Saint Lucia included Archbishop Duhig, EJD Stanley, ACV Melbourne, and Professor Richards. Doctor Lockhart Gibson, Chancellor AJ Thynne and Archbishop Sharp were amongst those who voted for Victoria Park. In 1930 the Senate handed over Victoria Park, less eleven acres reserved for a medical school, to the Brisbane City Council in exchange for the Saint Lucia site.

 

During the years of the Depression that followed the university suffered progressive reduction of government funding. Cuts were made to both staff salaries and numbers, while student numbers trebled between 1923 and 1933. There was no prospect of building the new university until 1935 when the Premier, W. Forgan Smith, announced that the Queensland Government would undertake construction at Saint Lucia. This was one of the three major development projects initiated in the mid 1930s by the Queensland government to create employment, the others being the Stanley River Dam and the Story Bridge. The University Senate called for and received schemes from various enthusiasts, including Professor Hawken, Dr FW Robinson, AB Leven, and Dr JJC Bradfield. Taking ideas from these suggestions the Senate committee produced its own preliminary design. The principle building, containing Arts, Law and administration, was E-shaped and enclosed one side of an arcaded quadrangle. Related outer buildings contained Engineering, Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, a museum and a teachers' training college. The Queensland government, despite hopes for a competition, appointed the Sydney firm of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co as architects for the project; and Jack Francis Hennessy (1887 - 1955) produced the coherent and logical plan that still lies at the heart of the University.

 

The foundation stone was laid in 1937 by Forgan Smith but it was another year before building commenced. Construction began in March 1938 with the main building, now known as the Forgan Smith Building, and was followed shortly afterward with the lower floors of the library and the Chemistry Building. It was to proceed, due to financial constraints, in stages clockwise around the court.

 

Work was disrupted by the Second World War (WWII). The main building served its first use, from 1942 - 1944, as the headquarters of General Sir Thomas Blamey (head of the Australian Defence Forces). The army evacuated the building and work re-commenced by 1948. The Forgan Smith Building was officially opened in May 1949 by Premier Hanlon. The Duhig Library (two-stories only and named for Archbishop Sir James Duhig) was also ready by this time, as was the Steele Building (named for the first professor of chemistry, Professor Bertram Steele).

 

In 1951 the Richards Building (named for the first professor of geology, Henry Casselli Richards) was completed. In 1955 the Parnell Building (named for the inaugural professor of physics, Thomas Parnell) and an addition to the west wing of the Forgan Smith Building were completed. In 1962, jointly funded by State and Commonwealth Governments, the Goddard Building (named for the second professor of biology, Ernest Jones Goddard) was completed. In 1965 three extra floors were added to the Duhig Library to the design of James Birrell.

 

The final building at the western end of the Forgan Smith was to have been a Great Hall. JD Story, the vice chancellor from 1938 until 1960, proposed in 1959 that this be replaced by a western Arts building and in 1972 construction began on the Michie Building (named for first the professor of classics, J.L. Michie). The state government announced in 1974 that it would provide the funding to clad the building in sandstone. The Michie Building was completed in 1978.

 

In March 1979 the colonnade between the Michie Building and the Goddard Building was completed enclosing the Great Court Complex.

 

A number of changes have been made over the years to the Great Court Complex. Some of buildings have been augmented or altered: there are various structures on top of the Goddard Building, and a new, discreet addition to the Law Library at the western end of the Forgan Smith Building which was designed by Robert Riddell. Perhaps the most significant change is that the planting within the Court is less formal than originally intended, and takes little account of Hennessy's plans for strong visual axes to tie the whole Court together. Notable also in this respect are Professor Gareth Robert's master plan for the university which involved the closing of the circular drive and the placement of the Main Library and the Great Hall in front of the Forgan Smith Building.

 

The Sculptors:

 

As part of Hennessy, Hennessy & Co's original concept, it was intended that the Great Court would include extensive sculptural work portraying historical panels, statues, coats of arms and panels of Australian plant and animal life. Many of the designs were done by Leo Drinan, who was the principle architect with Hennessy, Hennessy & Co. Work on the sculptures began in 1939, with German born John Theodore Muller and Frederick James McGowan as the principle stonemasons. Work was halted by the war in 1942 and McGowan died before it resumed three years later. Muller continued to carve until his death at more than 80 years of age, in 1953. At the time of his death, all of the friezes, most of the statues, and half of the grotesques, coats of arms, arches and roundels were completed.

 

Carving virtually stopped at the University after Muller's death and resumed only after the Michie Building was under construction. A competition amongst several Queensland sculptors in 1976 led to the commissioning of Mrs Rhyl Hinwood. Mrs Hinwood has since continued to carve numerous grotesques and coats of arms for the Court, as well as the two monumental figures at the main entrance to the Goddard Building.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

A fine publicity brochure for the French establishment of Bayard, tailors of Grenoble and although not dated it has such a feel of the 'thirties. It is beautifully printed by Girauld & Rivoire of Lyon and that brings out the many wonderful illustrations of mens and boys clothing shown. I had wondered if this was a 'generic brochure' that was overprinted to the requirments of different companies but the more I look at this, the more I think it may have just been for Bayard who appear to have been formed in 1925 and who, still in existence, had a chain of shops in France.

 

The illustration is interesting as it is by French artist and illustrator Marcel-Jacques Hemjic who produced many fashion drawings and sketches during his career. Hemjic died in 1942 although I can find little or nothing out about him. But he certainly captures the 'age' here.