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Exploitant : Autocars Groussin
Réseau Aléop - Pays de la Loire
Substitution SNCF en raison de travaux pendant le week-end du 11 novembre 2022.
Véhicule : HEULIEZ BUS GX 427 EEV
Identification : 1067 (BL-448-SY)
Exploitant : Keolis Bordeaux Métropole
Dépôt : Dépôt de Lescure
Réseau : TBM (Bordeaux Métropole)
Ligne : 18 NAVETTE STADE EURO 2016
Voiture : 1811
Destination : Mise en Ligne
À l'occasion de l'UEFA EURO 2016 (coupe d'Europe de football), une ligne spéciale a été créée pour délester le Tram C de l'afflux de supporters, malgré les renforts mis en place. Cette "Navette Stade" porte le numéro 18, et fait la liaison entre le Parc des Expositions (et Nouveau Stade) et la station Tram B "La Cité du Vin" (anciennement "Bassins à Flot"), pour une correspondance depuis/vers le Centre-Ville. Cette Navette est mise en place avant et après le match, pour répartir les mouvements sur 2 axes. Pour l'occasion, un large périmètre avait été bloqué à la circulation autour du Stade Matmut Atlantique pour faciliter la circulation des supporters et des bus, et un arrêt spécial a été aménagé parallèlement à la station de Tram. Une zone de stationnement était mise en place pendant le match pour les bus assurant la Navette sur les "Rue du Vergne" et "Avenue de la Jallère". Cette Navette a été pérennisée au sein de l'offre TBM pour les événements au Stade Matmut Atlantique.
14/06/2016 18:35
Rue du Vergne ; F-33 BORDEAUX
Véhicule : IRISBUS IVECO Citelis 18 GNV
Identification : 2611 (BC-386-WN)
Exploitant : Keolis Bordeaux Métropole
Réseau : TBM (Bordeaux Métropole)
Dépôt : Centre d'Exploitation du Lac (CEL)
Ligne : 14 NAVETTE RELAIS TRAM C
Voiture : 30031
Destination : Gare Saint-Jean
Suite à l'incendie du parking souterrain des "Salinières" le 18 Mai 2019, la circulation des tramways de la ligne Tram C (passant au-dessus) a été suspendue entre Quinconces et Gare Saint-Jean. Il s'agit pour les équipes techniques d'experts d'évaluer l'état de la structure après le sinistre, pour ainsi déterminer les travaux à engager, et la date de rétablissement de la circulation des rames.
Des navettes de substitution ont donc été mises en places, en mobilisant le parc articulé disponible, et en délestant des bus standards de réserve sur les lignes pour libérer des articulés supplémentaires.
21/05/2019 16:10
Place de Bir Hakeim ; Bordeaux
Copyyright © Mudcat2010 2013
let's all play fair, don't without my permission copy, reproduce, download, distribute or exploit in anyway. Remember what you learned in Kindergarten
Moscow. Kubinka tank museum.
The Iosif Stalin tank (or IS tank, named after the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin), was a heavy tank developed by the Soviet Union during World War II. The tanks in the series are also sometimes called JS or ИС tanks.
The heavy tank was designed with thick armour to counter the German 88 mm guns, and sported a main gun that was capable of defeating the German Tiger and Panther tanks. It was mainly a breakthrough tank, firing a heavy high-explosive shell that was useful against entrenchments and bunkers. The IS-2 was put into service in April 1944, and was used as a spearhead in the Battle for Berlin by the Red Army in the final stage of the war.
The IS-3 had a superior armour layout, with a hemispherical turret like many later Soviet tanks
In late 1944 the design was upgraded to the IS-3. This tank had improved armour layout, and a hemispherical cast turret (resembling an overturned "soup bowl") which was to be the hallmark of post-war Soviet tanks. While this low, hemispherical turret may have made the IS-3 a smaller target, it also imposed severe penalties inside the tank by significantly diminishing the working headroom, especially for the loader (Soviet tanks in general are characterized by uncomfortably small interior space compared to Western tanks). The low turret also limited the maximum depression of the main gun, since the gun breech had little room inside the turret to pivot on its vertical axis. As a result, the IS-3 was less able to take advantage of hull-down positions, a tactic at which Western tanks were better suited (Perrett 1987:21). The IS-3's pointed prow earned it the nickname Shchuka (Pike) by its crews. It weighed slightly less and stood 30 cm lower.
The IS-3 came too late to see action in World War II. Though some older sources claim that the tank saw action at the end of the war in Europe, there are no official reports to confirm this. It is now generally accepted that the tank saw no action against the Germans, although one regiment may have been deployed against the Japanese in Manchuria.
In 1952, a further development was put into production, the IS-10. Due of the political climate in the wake of Stalin's 1953 death, it was renamed T-10.
In the mid-1950s, the remaining IS-2 tanks (mostly model 1944 variants) were upgraded to keep them battle-worthy. This upgrade produced the IS-2M, which introduced fittings such as external fuel tanks on the rear hull (the basic IS-2 had these only on the hull sides), stowage bins on both sides of the hull, and protective skirting along the top edges of the tracks. IS-3 was also slightly modernized as IS-3M.
[edit] Operational history
The IS-2 tank first saw combat in the spring of 1944. IS-2s were assigned to separate heavy tank regiments, normally of 21 tanks each. These regiments were used to reinforce the most important attack sectors during major offensive operations. Tactically, they were employed as breakthrough tanks. Their role was to support infantry in the assault, using their large guns to destroy bunkers, buildings, dug-in crew-served weapons, and other 'soft' targets. They were also capable of taking on any German AFVs if required. Once a breakthrough was achieved, lighter, more mobile T-34s would take over the exploitation.
Frontal view of an IS-3. The squat, solid-looking front profile and pointed prow are highly distinctive.
The IS-3 first appeared to Western observers at the Allied Victory Parade in Berlin in September 1945. The IS-3 was an impressive development in the eyes of Western military observers, the British in particular, who responded with heavy tank designs of their own.
By the 1950s, the emergence of the main battle tank concept - combining medium tank mobility with the firepower of the heavy tank - had rendered heavy tanks obsolete in Soviet operational doctrine. In the late 1960s, the remaining Soviet heavy tanks were transferred to Red Army reserve service and storage. The IS-2 Model 1944 remained in active service much longer in the armies of Cuba, China and North Korea. A regiment of Chinese IS-2s was available for use in the Korean War, but saw no service there. In response to border disputes between the Soviet Union and China, some Soviet IS-3s were dug in as fixed pillboxes along the Soviet-Chinese border. The IS-3 was used in the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Prague Spring in 1968.
During the early 1950s all IS-3s were modernised as IS-3M models. The Egyptian Army acquired about 100 IS-3M tanks in all from the Soviet Union.[5] During the Six Day War, a single regiment of IS-3M tanks was stationed with the 7th Infantry Division at Rafah and the 125th Tank Brigade of the 6th Mechanized Division at Kuntilla was also equipped with about 60 IS-3M tanks.[6] Israeli infantry and paratrooper units had considerable difficulty with the IS-3M when it was encountered due to its thick armour, which shrugged off hits from normal infantry anti-tank weapons such as the bazooka.[6] Even the 90mm AP shell fired by the main gun of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) M-48A2 Patton tanks could not penetrate the frontal armour of the IS-3s at normal battle ranges.[6] There were a number of engagements between the M48A2 Pattons of the IDF 7th Armoured Brigade and IS-3s supporting Egyptian positions at Rafah in which several M48A2s were knocked out in the fighting.[6] Despite this, the slow rate of fire, poor engine performance (the engine was not well suited to hot-climate operations), and rudimentary fire control of the IS-3s proved to be a significant handicap, and about 73 IS-3s were lost in the 1967 war.[6] Most Egyptian IS-3 tanks were withdrawn from service, though at least one regiment of IS-3 tanks was retained in service as late as the 1973 October war.[6] The IDF itself experimented with a few captured IS-3M tanks, but found them ill-suited to fast moving desert tank warfare; those that were not scrapped were turned into stationary defensive pillbox emplacements in the Jordan River area.[6]
After the Korean War, China attempted to reverse-engineer the IS-2/IS-3 as Type 122 medium tank.[7] The project was cancelled in favour of the Type 59, a copy of the Soviet T-54A.
Véhicule : IRISBUS IVECO Citelis 18 GNV
Identification : 2661 (BL-960-HZ)
Exploitant : Keolis Bordeaux Métropole
Réseau : TBM (Bordeaux Métropole)
Dépôt : Centre d'Exploitation du Lac (CEL)
Ligne : 14 NAVETTE RELAIS TRAM C
Voiture : 1401
Destination : LE BOUSCAT Place Ravezies
Du Lundi 15 au Jeudi 25 Avril 2019, 2 phases d'interruptions se sont succédé sur la ligne Tram C, pour que les équipes de maintenance effectuent des travaux sur les voies.
Durant la première phase, la ligne était coupée entre les stations "Grand Parc" et "Gare Saint-Jean". Lors de la seconde phase, l'interruption a été réduite à la section de "Quinconces" à "Gare Saint-Jean".
17/04/2019 17:26
Allée de Bristol ; Bordeaux
Exploité par la société Farafina Tours qui dispose d'une flotte hétéroclite de cars de seconde main venus d'Europe (Setra S213RL, Renault Tracer...) ou d'Asie.
Saint-Paterne-Racan (Indre-et-Loire)
Château de la Roche-Racan.
Château de la Roche Racan (2e quart 17e siècle)
Le château construit à partir de 1634, domine la vallée de l'Escotais. La terrasse fut établie en 1880 et refaite en 1895. L'ensemble est ainsi décrite dans l'aveu de 1711 : "le dit chastel consistant en un grand pavillon avec tourelle au coin de celui-ci, un autre pavillon servant de chapelle, entre lequel pavillon, il y a un grand corps de logis et plusieurs autres bâtiments".
Le fief, connu depuis le début du XVe siècle, sous le nom de la Roche majeur*, relevait de la prévôté d'Oë. Le fief qui en 1405 appartenait à Hardouin des Fontaines* passa par alliance à la famille de Bueil.
Le château actuel fut construit à partir de 1634 par Honorat de Bueil*, baron de Racan.
Parmi les ouvriers auxquels Honorat de Bueil, commanda la construction on remarque Jacques Gabriel*, maître maçon, puis maître architecte en 1652.
Il ne reste plus du corps de logis prolongé de deux pavillons que l'aile ouest et une partie du bâtiment central.
Le 2 novembre 1745, Antoine Pierre de Bueil vend La Roche Racan à Michel Rolland des Escotais, seigneur de Chantilly, en Anjou. Michel des Ecotais (Escotais) chercha en vain à faire nommer le domaine "La Roche des Ecotais"; en revanche, le ruisseau qui arrose le vallon prit alors le nom de "l'Ecotais" qu'il a gardé. La famille des Ecotais émigra en 1791; ses bien furent saisis et vendus.
A la Révolution, le château est acquis, en adjudication, par Etienne René Méhabert.
La veuve de René céda le château le 7 mars 1818 au sieur Michel Mathurin Mabille, qui démolit le pavillon en contre-haut de la chapelle et qui établit dans les cuisines et les écuries une fabrique de poterie.
Au sieur Mabille succéda le 27 février 1828 le sieur Philarète Bardon de l'Héraudière. Après celui-ci vint le comte Jacques Antoine de Chalot, avec son épouse veuve de Talma*.
Le 10 novembre 1830, le château, en fort mauvais état, fut acquis par Aimé Bodin, professeur de rhétorique au lycée de Tours* et membre du conseil d'arrondissement de Tours. Paralysé par le choléra en 1832, il se retira au château en se livrant à ses études littéraires, en continuant l'exploitation de la fabrique de poterie.
En octobre 1845, M. Bodin vendit le château entièrement délabré à M. Alphonse Huet, avocat à Paris, qui le restaura. Il établit dans la vallée un bélier hydraulique qui envoie l'eau quarante mètres plus haut, dans le parc, qu'elle arrose en cascades et en ruisseaux. En 1874, M. Huet fut obligé de revenir à Paris, où il mourut deux ans plus tard.
Le 17 juin 1875, M. Huet avait vendu le château à M. Francis Arthur Larreguy de Civrieux, officier de la Légion d'Honneur, ancien Président de section au Conseil de Préfecture de la Seine*. Il fit restaurer l'intérieur du château, il fit également détruire le vieux moulin à eau et assainir le ruisseau. Il du se rapprocher de Paris pour des raisons de famille et revendit le château en 1888 à M. Pierre Gauthier, négociant et propriétaire d'un magasin de confection à Paris.
Pierre Gauthier fera une somptueuse restauration de la terrasse, en coupant beaucoup d'arbres, il développera les vignes sur le côteau, vignes qui donneront un vin "Clos de la Roche-Racan".
Après la succession de 3 propriétaires au 20e siècle, le château de la Roche est racheté en 1963 par M. Marcel Brakers de Hugo, gérant de sociétés, et c'est depuis son décès, sa fille qui en est la propriétaire.
* Cet ancien fief était connu sous le nom de la Roche au Majeur, indiquant ainsi que le seigneur était le "majeur" de son suzerain. Le seigneur majeur a pour rôle d'assurer l'intégralité du service du fief au suzerain. Le seigneur majeur ne possède pas forcément la coseigneurie la plus importante. On peut un peu voir le seigneur majeur comme un syndic de copropriété.
* Hardouin de Fontaine, sire de Fontaine-Guérin, est chevalier dans la compagnie de Pierre de Bueil dont il épousera la fille alors âgée de moins de onze ans, en 1389. Le couple aura deux fils, dont Jean qui sera l'ancêtre du poète Racan.
* Honorat de Bueil (1589-1670), seigneur de Racan, nom qu'il associe à la Roche, est aussi poète, sous le nom de "Racan". Orphelin à 13 ans, il fut recueilli par des parents qui le placèrent comme page à la cour d'Henri IV. Il s'intéressa d'abord à la poésie, mais aussi à la musique et les mathématiques. En 1605, il fut présenté à Malherbe qui allait pour lui un maître et un ami. Il laissera une grande œuvre, les "Bergeries" (1619), une pastorale dramatique de près de 3?000 vers. Oeuvre jamais jouée en entier, mais qui fut un succès de librairie avec une douzaine de rééditions en 10 ans. Les plus beaux passages, comme les «Plaintes du vieil Alcidor», furent récités à l'hôtel de Rambouillet et dans tous les salons. Ses obligations militaires, il prit part aux guerres contre les protestants, l'éloignèrent de la cour et il finit par se retirer dans son château, mais en continuant d'entretenir une correspondance ses amis parisiens, Chapelain, Conrart et Ménage. Il sera un des premiers académiciens, nommés à la fondation de l'Académie Française par Richelieu (1634), il y fera le douzième discours. Il laissera des Mémoires pour la Vie de Malherbe (1651).
* Jacques II Gabriel est un maître maçon, issu d'une dynastie d'architectes normands. Il a été baptisé à Argentan le 16 octobre 1605. Il s'est ensuite établi à Saint-Paterne vers 1636, où il serait mort en 1662. L'un de ses enfants, Jacques V Gabriel (1667-1742), aura une production architecturale importante: Construction de l'hôtel de ville de Blois et du pont Jacques-Gabriel, des hôtels particuliers place Vendôme à Paris, construction des bâtiments de la Compagnie des Indes à Lorient, etc...
* En 1826, la comédienne Charlotte (dite Caroline) Vanhove, veuve du tragédien le plus célèbre de son temps, Talma, épouse le comte de Chalot, un cavalier ami de longue date, qui meure rapidement. Elle meurt à 90 ans, en 1860, dans son hôtel parisien.
* Aimé Bodin, professeur de rhétorique à Tours, commettra quelques ouvrages "Conciones Religieux et Monarchiques, ou Matières de discours français et latins pour la rhétorique, tirée de l'histoire sacrée et de l'histoire de France", ou encore "Distiques Moraux, et Sentences d'Ovide" avec la traduction en vers français... Un critique, du Mémorial Catholique, probablement un confrère, fera remarquer : "Les sujets de discours français et latins que M. Bodin publie pour la classe de rhétorique ne sont pas toujours présentés avec toute l'exactitude et la précision qu'on pourroit désirer...".
* Alphonse Huet, avocat, en 1850 proposera quelques modifications à la loi électorale, pour y apporter de la "stabilité" :
- Les électeurs de 21 à 25 ans auront chacun une voix.
- Les électeurs de 26 à 35 ans, chacun deux voix.
- Ceux de 36 ans et au-dessus, chacun trois voix.
Et cet honorable juriste fait remarquer : "N'est-il pas contraire à la morale, à la raison, à la justice, qu'un jeune homme de 21 ans ait, dans l'ordre politique, la même autorité, le même pouvoir que son père ?"
Et il en prend pour preuve que ce même jeune homme ne pourra pas se marier avant 25 ans, sans le consentement de son père.
Et il insiste : "la société ne doit pas donner l'autorité aux plus jeunes, aux plus inexpérimentés, à peine de voir bientôt sombrer le vaisseau de l'État".
Au passage, il relève le principal défaut du suffrage universel: Sa mobilité. Et pour preuve, il souligne que les élections de 1848, "toutes démocratiques et socialistes"; et celles de 1849, "presque toutes dans le sens opposé".
* Les Conseils de Préfecture étaient des organes de justice administrative. Les contentieux fiscaux représentaient une part très importante de leurs activités, et en particuler sur la patente et la contribution mobilière. Les Conseils de Préfecture furent supprimés en septembre 1926.
Voir : "Louis Arnould - Racan (1589-1670) Histoire anecdotique et critique de sa vie et ses oeuvres - Slatkine Reprints - Genève 1970"
Exploitant : STIVO
Réseau : STIVO
Ligne : 34
Lieu : Les Valanchards (Jouy-le-Moutier, F-95)
Lien TC Infos : tc-infos.fr/vehicule/8786
1956; The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr. Cover art by Verne Tossey. Adrian is the youngest son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Exploitant : CAB Solution
Réseau : Navette Substitution SNCF Île-de-France
Ligne : Navette Transilien J
Lieu : Gare d'Argenteuil (Argenteuil, F-95)
Lien TC Infos : tc-infos.fr/id/43818
After faithfully serving humans there comes the point one cannot stop the march of time, and the remains are found in a spare parts warehouse only waiting to be exploited.
To misuse the beauty of nature
To exploit the love of nature and the animals of the ocean
To instrumentalize women's feelings
Profiteering
Abusive men: www.lfcc.on.ca/HCT_SWASM_4.html
Exploitant : Transdev TVO
Réseau : R'Bus (Argenteuil)
Ligne : 9
Lieu : Gare d'Argenteuil (Argenteuil, F-95)
Lien TC Infos : tc-infos.fr/id/14519
Buddy Holly - The day the music died
"Buddy Holly played rock and roll for only two short years, but the wealth of material he recorded in that time made a major and lasting impact on popular music. Holly was an innovator who wrote his own material and was among the first to exploit such advanced studio techniques as double-tracking. He pioneered and popularized the now-standard rock-band lineup of two guitars, bass and drums. In his final months, he even began experimenting with orchestration. Holly’s catalog of songs includes such standards of the rock and roll canon as “Rave On,” “Peggy Sue,” “That’ll Be the Day,” Oh Boy!” and “Maybe Baby.” Though Holly lacked the arresting sexuality of Elvis Presley, he nonetheless cut an engaging, charismatic figure with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses and vocal hiccup. His creative self-reliance and energetic, inspired craftsmanship prefigured the coming wave of rock and rollers in the Sixties. Holly was a professed influence on the Beatles and Hollies (both of whom derived their names from his). Even the Rolling Stones had their first major British hit with Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
He was born Charles Hardin Holley (later amended to “Holly") on September 7th, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. He learned to play guitar, piano and fiddle at an early age. After high school, he formed the Western and Bop Band, a country-oriented act that performed regularly on a Lubbock radio station and opened for acts that came through town. After being noticed by a talent scout, Holly was signed to Decca in early 1956, recording demos and singles for the label in Nashville under the name Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes. Back home, Holly opened a show at the Lubbock Youth Center for Elvis Presley, an event that hastened his conversion from country and western to rock and roll. ("We owe it all to Elvis,” he later said).
On February 25th, 1957, Holly and a revised band lineup, now dubbed the Crickets, recorded “That’ll Be the Day” at the Clovis, New Mexico, studio of producer Norman Petty. The effortless, upbeat rocker won them a contract with the Coral and Brunswick labels. Later that year it became a Number One pop hit and even rose to Number Two on the R&B charts. The terms of Holly’s arrangement with his record labels, negotiated by producer/manager Petty, were somewhat unusual. Releases alternated on Coral and Brunswick, with those on the former label credited to Buddy Holly and the latter to the Crickets. Between August 1957 and August 1958, Holly and the Crickets charted seven Top Forty singles.
In October 1958, Holly split both with the Crickets and with Petty, moving to Greenwich Village and marrying Maria Elena Santiago, to whom he proposed on their first date. Because of legal and financial problems engendered by his breakup with Petty, Holly reluctantly agreed to perform on the Winter Dance Party, an ill-advised bus tour of the Midwest in the winter of 1959. Following a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a private plane to the next stop on the tour, Moorhead, Minnesota. Two other performers, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, joined him. Their plane left the Mason City, Iowa, airport at one in the morning and crashed in a cornfield a few minutes later, killing all aboard. Buddy Holly was only 22 years old at the time of the crash - an event immortalized in Don McLean’s “American Pie” as “the day the music died."”
TIMELINE
September 7, 1936: Charles Hardin Holley, a.k.a., Buddy Holly, is born in Lubbock, Texas.
September 1, 1953: Best friends Buddy (Holly) and Bob (Montgomery) audition for radio station KDAV in Lubbock. The teenage duo is given a half-hour show on Sunday afternoons, during which they perform country and bluegrass standards.
October 14, 1955: The trio of Buddy Holly, Bob Montgomery and Larry Welborn opens for Bill Haley and the Comets in Lubbock. Holly impresses a Nashville talent scout, leading to his eventual signing with Decca Records.
October 15, 1955: In the process of moving from their country-music origins toward the rockabilly sound, Buddy Holly’s trio open for Elvis Presley in Lubbock.
January 9, 1956: Buddy Holly & the Two-Tones (Sonny Curtis and Don Guess) kick off a 14-date country & western tour in Little Rock, Arkansas. They’re bottom-billed on a lineup that includes Hank Thompson, George Jones, Wanda Jackson and Cowboy Copas.
January 26, 1956: Signed to Decca Records, Buddy Holly heads to Nashville for his first official recording session. Overseen by veteran country producer Owen Bradley, the session yields four tracks, including Holly’s debut single ("Blue Days, Black Nights") and a classic cover ("Midnight Shift").
February 25, 1957: Buddy Holly records “That’ll Be the Day” at Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The single is released on the Brunswick label (a Decca subsidiary) and credited to the Crickets.
September 23, 1957: “That’ll Be the Day” hits #1. “Peggy Sue” is released hot on its heels, reaching #3. Buddy Holly performs both songs on The Ed Sullivan Show in December.
January 25, 1958: “Oh Boy!” becomes Buddy Holly’s third Top Ten hit.
March 28, 1958: Buddy Holly performs at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theater as part of a bill that includes Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers. It is the kickoff date for a two-month tour billed as “Alan Freed’s Big Beat Show.”
August 15, 1958: Buddy Holly marries Maria Elena Santiago back home in Lubbock.
October 3, 1958: Another caravan tour, “The Biggest Show of Stars for 1958—The Autumn Edition,” kicks off in Worcester, Massachusetts. Buddy Holly and the Crickets share the bill with Bobby Darin, Dion and the Belmonts, Clyde McPhatter, and the Coasters.
January 5, 1959: “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” becomes the last release from Buddy Holly before his death.
January 23, 1959: The “Winter Dance Party,” an ill-advised tour through the frigid Midwest, is launched at George Devine’s Million Dollar Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Buddy Holly, who has parted ways with the Crickets, is the headliner. The other acts are Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper and Frankie Sardo.
February 3, 1959: After performing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly charters a plane to fly him to Fargo, North Dakota. Shortly after takeoff, the plane crashes eight miles northwest of the airfield, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. The Big Bopper) and pilot Roger Peterson.
March 9, 1959: “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” written by Paul Anka and recorded by Buddy Holly at his last studio session, becomes a posthumous hit.
December 24, 1969: The Buddy Holly Story, a best-of album that has been in print since 1959, is certified gold (500,000 copies sold).
July 1, 1976: Lifelong Buddy Holly fan Paul McCartney purchases rights to the entire Holly song catalog.
September 7, 1976: On what would have been Buddy Holly’s 40th birthday, the singer’s life and music are the subject of a week-long tribute organized by Paul McCartney. “Buddy Holly Week” becomes an annual affair.
May 18, 1978: The Buddy Holly Story, a popular film biography starring Gary Busey in the title role, is released. Twelve years later, the actor pays a quarter of a million dollars at auction for an acoustic guitar that belonged to Holly.
February 3, 1979: A commemorative concert is held at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, exactly 20 years after the final show played by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Del Shannon and the Drifters are among the performers.
January 23, 1986: Buddy Holly is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the first induction dinner, held in New York City. Holly’s widow, Maria Elena, accepts on his behalf.
The exploitation rights for this text are the property of the Vienna Tourist Board. This text may be reprinted free of charge until further notice, even partially and in edited form. Forward sample copy to: Vienna Tourist Board, Media Management, Invalidenstraße 6, 1030 Vienna; media.rel@wien.info. All information in this text without guarantee.
Author: Andreas Nierhaus, Curator of Architecture/Wien Museum
Last updated January 2014
Architecture in Vienna
Vienna's 2,000-year history is present in a unique density in the cityscape. The layout of the center dates back to the Roman city and medieval road network. Romanesque and Gothic churches characterize the streets and squares as well as palaces and mansions of the baroque city of residence. The ring road is an expression of the modern city of the 19th century, in the 20th century extensive housing developments set accents in the outer districts. Currently, large-scale urban development measures are implemented; distinctive buildings of international star architects complement the silhouette of the city.
Due to its function as residence of the emperor and European power center, Vienna for centuries stood in the focus of international attention, but it was well aware of that too. As a result, developed an outstanding building culture, and still today on a worldwide scale only a few cities can come up with a comparable density of high-quality architecture. For several years now, Vienna has increased its efforts to connect with its historical highlights and is drawing attention to itself with some spectacular new buildings. The fastest growing city in the German-speaking world today most of all in residential construction is setting standards. Constants of the Viennese architecture are respect for existing structures, the palpability of historical layers and the dialogue between old and new.
Culmination of medieval architecture: the Stephansdom
The oldest architectural landmark of the city is St. Stephen's Cathedral. Under the rule of the Habsburgs, defining the face of the city from the late 13th century until 1918 in a decisive way, the cathedral was upgraded into the sacral monument of the political ambitions of the ruling house. The 1433 completed, 137 meters high southern tower, by the Viennese people affectionately named "Steffl", is a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture in Europe. For decades he was the tallest stone structure in Europe, until today he is the undisputed center of the city.
The baroque residence
Vienna's ascension into the ranks of the great European capitals began in Baroque. Among the most important architects are Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Outside the city walls arose a chain of summer palaces, including the garden Palais Schwarzenberg (1697-1704) as well as the Upper and Lower Belvedere of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1714-22). Among the most important city palaces are the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene (1695-1724, now a branch of the Belvedere) and the Palais Daun-Kinsky (auction house in Kinsky 1713-19). The emperor himself the Hofburg had complemented by buildings such as the Imperial Library (1722-26) and the Winter Riding School (1729-34). More important, however, for the Habsburgs was the foundation of churches and monasteries. Thus arose before the city walls Fischer von Erlach's Karlskirche (1714-39), which with its formal and thematic complex show façade belongs to the major works of European Baroque. In colored interior rooms like that of St. Peter's Church (1701-22), the contemporary efforts for the synthesis of architecture, painting and sculpture becomes visible.
Upgrading into metropolis: the ring road time (Ringstraßenzeit)
Since the Baroque, reflections on extension of the hopelessly overcrowed city were made, but only Emperor Franz Joseph ordered in 1857 the demolition of the fortifications and the connection of the inner city with the suburbs. 1865, the Ring Road was opened. It is as the most important boulevard of Europe an architectural and in terms of urban development achievement of the highest rank. The original building structure is almost completely preserved and thus conveys the authentic image of a metropolis of the 19th century. The public representational buildings speak, reflecting accurately the historicism, by their style: The Greek Antique forms of Theophil Hansen's Parliament (1871-83) stood for democracy, the Renaissance of the by Heinrich Ferstel built University (1873-84) for the flourishing of humanism, the Gothic of the Town Hall (1872-83) by Friedrich Schmidt for the medieval civic pride.
Dominating remained the buildings of the imperial family: Eduard van der Nüll's and August Sicardsburg's Opera House (1863-69), Gottfried Semper's and Carl Hasenauer's Burgtheater (1874-88), their Museum of Art History and Museum of Natural History (1871-91) and the Neue (New) Hofburg (1881-1918 ). At the same time the ring road was the preferred residential area of mostly Jewish haute bourgeoisie. With luxurious palaces the families Ephrussi, Epstein or Todesco made it clear that they had taken over the cultural leadership role in Viennese society. In the framework of the World Exhibition of 1873, the new Vienna presented itself an international audience. At the ring road many hotels were opened, among them the Hotel Imperial and today's Palais Hansen Kempinski.
Laboratory of modernity: Vienna around 1900
Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank (1903-06) was one of the last buildings in the Ring road area Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank (1903-06), which with it façade, liberated of ornament, and only decorated with "functional" aluminum buttons and the glass banking hall now is one of the icons of modern architecture. Like no other stood Otto Wagner for the dawn into the 20th century: His Metropolitan Railway buildings made the public transport of the city a topic of architecture, the church of the Psychiatric hospital at Steinhofgründe (1904-07) is considered the first modern church.
With his consistent focus on the function of a building ("Something impractical can not be beautiful"), Wagner marked a whole generation of architects and made Vienna the laboratory of modernity: in addition to Joseph Maria Olbrich, the builder of the Secession (1897-98) and Josef Hoffmann, the architect of the at the western outskirts located Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1904) and founder of the Vienna Workshop (Wiener Werkstätte, 1903) is mainly to mention Adolf Loos, with the Loos House at the square Michaelerplatz (1909-11) making architectural history. The extravagant marble cladding of the business zone stands in maximal contrast, derived from the building function, to the unadorned facade above, whereby its "nudity" became even more obvious - a provocation, as well as his culture-critical texts ("Ornament and Crime"), with which he had greatest impact on the architecture of the 20th century. Public contracts Loos remained denied. His major works therefore include villas, apartment facilities and premises as the still in original state preserved Tailor salon Knize at Graben (1910-13) and the restored Loos Bar (1908-09) near the Kärntner Straße (passageway Kärntner Durchgang).
Between the Wars: International Modern Age and social housing
After the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, Vienna became capital of the newly formed small country of Austria. In the heart of the city, the architects Theiss & Jaksch built 1931-32 the first skyscraper in Vienna as an exclusive residential address (Herrengasse - alley 6-8). To combat the housing shortage for the general population, the social democratic city government in a globally unique building program within a few years 60,000 apartments in hundreds of apartment buildings throughout the city area had built, including the famous Karl Marx-Hof by Karl Ehn (1925-30). An alternative to the multi-storey buildings with the 1932 opened International Werkbundsiedlung was presented, which was attended by 31 architects from Austria, Germany, France, Holland and the USA and showed models for affordable housing in greenfield areas. With buildings of Adolf Loos, André Lurçat, Richard Neutra, Gerrit Rietveld, the Werkbundsiedlung, which currently is being restored at great expense, is one of the most important documents of modern architecture in Austria.
Modernism was also expressed in significant Villa buildings: The House Beer (1929-31) by Josef Frank exemplifies the refined Wiener living culture of the interwar period, while the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1926-28, today Bulgarian Cultural Institute), built by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein together with the architect Paul Engelmann for his sister Margarete, by its aesthetic radicalism and mathematical rigor represents a special case within contemporary architecture.
Expulsion, war and reconstruction
After the "Anschluss (Annexation)" to the German Reich in 1938, numerous Jewish builders, architects (female and male ones), who had been largely responsible for the high level of Viennese architecture, have been expelled from Austria. During the Nazi era, Vienna remained largely unaffected by structural transformations, apart from the six flak towers built for air defense of Friedrich Tamms (1942-45), made of solid reinforced concrete which today are present as memorials in the cityscape.
The years after the end of World War II were characterized by the reconstruction of the by bombs heavily damaged city. The architecture of those times was marked by aesthetic pragmatism, but also by the attempt to connect with the period before 1938 and pick up on current international trends. Among the most important buildings of the 1950s are Roland Rainer's City Hall (1952-58), the by Oswald Haerdtl erected Wien Museum at Karlsplatz (1954-59) and the 21er Haus of Karl Schwanzer (1958-62).
The youngsters come
Since the 1960s, a young generation was looking for alternatives to the moderate modernism of the reconstruction years. With visionary designs, conceptual, experimental and above all temporary architectures, interventions and installations, Raimund Abraham, Günther Domenig, Eilfried Huth, Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler and the groups Coop Himmelb(l)au, Haus-Rucker-Co and Missing Link rapidly got international attention. Although for the time being it was more designed than built, was the influence on the postmodern and deconstructivist trends of the 1970s and 1980s also outside Austria great. Hollein's futuristic "Retti" candle shop at Charcoal Market/Kohlmarkt (1964-65) and Domenig's biomorphic building of the Central Savings Bank in Favoriten (10th district of Vienna - 1975-79) are among the earliest examples, later Hollein's Haas-Haus (1985-90), the loft conversion Falkestraße (1987/88) by Coop Himmelb(l)au or Domenig's T Center (2002-04) were added. Especially Domenig, Hollein, Coop Himmelb(l)au and the architects Ortner & Ortner (ancient members of Haus-Rucker-Co) by orders from abroad the new Austrian and Viennese architecture made a fixed international concept.
MuseumQuarter and Gasometer
Since the 1980s, the focus of building in Vienna lies on the compaction of the historic urban fabric that now as urban habitat of high quality no longer is put in question. Among the internationally best known projects is the by Ortner & Ortner planned MuseumsQuartier in the former imperial stables (competition 1987, 1998-2001), which with institutions such as the MUMOK - Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig, the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Architecture Center Vienna and the Zoom Children's Museum on a wordwide scale is under the largest cultural complexes. After controversies in the planning phase, here an architectural compromise between old and new has been achieved at the end, whose success as an urban stage with four million visitors (2012) is overwhelming.
The dialogue between old and new, which has to stand on the agenda of building culture of a city that is so strongly influenced by history, also features the reconstruction of the Gasometer in Simmering by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Wilhelm Holzbauer, Jean Nouvel and Manfred Wehdorn (1999-2001). Here was not only created new housing, but also a historical industrial monument reinterpreted into a signal in the urban development area.
New Neighborhood
In recent years, the major railway stations and their surroundings moved into the focus of planning. Here not only necessary infrastructural measures were taken, but at the same time opened up spacious inner-city residential areas and business districts. Among the prestigious projects are included the construction of the new Vienna Central Station, started in 2010 with the surrounding office towers of the Quartier Belvedere and the residential and school buildings of the Midsummer quarter (Sonnwendviertel). Europe's largest wooden tower invites here for a spectacular view to the construction site and the entire city. On the site of the former North Station are currently being built 10,000 homes and 20,000 jobs, on that of the Aspangbahn station is being built at Europe's greatest Passive House settlement "Euro Gate", the area of the North Western Railway Station is expected to be developed from 2020 for living and working. The largest currently under construction residential project but can be found in the north-eastern outskirts, where in Seaside Town Aspern till 2028 living and working space for 40,000 people will be created.
In one of the "green lungs" of Vienna, the Prater, 2013, the WU campus was opened for the largest University of Economics of Europe. Around the central square spectacular buildings of an international architect team from Great Britain, Japan, Spain and Austria are gathered that seem to lead a sometimes very loud conversation about the status quo of contemporary architecture (Hitoshi Abe, BUSarchitektur, Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid, NO MAD Arquitectos, Carme Pinós).
Flying high
International is also the number of architects who have inscribed themselves in the last few years with high-rise buildings in the skyline of Vienna and make St. Stephen's a not always unproblematic competition. Visible from afar is Massimiliano Fuksas' 138 and 127 meters high elegant Twin Tower at Wienerberg (1999-2001). The monolithic, 75-meter-high tower of the Hotel Sofitel at the Danube Canal by Jean Nouvel (2007-10), on the other hand, reacts to the particular urban situation and stages in its top floor new perspectives to the historical center on the other side.
Also at the water stands Dominique Perrault's DC Tower (2010-13) in the Danube City - those high-rise city, in which since the start of construction in 1996, the expansion of the city north of the Danube is condensed symbolically. Even in this environment, the slim and at the same time striking vertically folded tower of Perrault is beyond all known dimensions; from its Sky Bar, from spring 2014 on you are able to enjoy the highest view of Vienna. With 250 meters, the tower is the tallest building of Austria and almost twice as high as the St. Stephen's Cathedral. Vienna, thus, has acquired a new architectural landmark which cannot be overlooked - whether it also has the potential to become a landmark of the new Vienna, only time will tell. The architectural history of Vienna, where European history is presence and new buildings enter into an exciting and not always conflict-free dialogue with a great and outstanding architectural heritage, in any case has yet to offer exciting chapters.
Info: The folder "Architecture: From Art Nouveau to the Presence" is available at the Vienna Tourist Board and can be downloaded on www.wien.info/media/files/guide-architecture-in-wien.pdf.
All photographs in this portfolio are copyrighted and owned by me, Amy Weiss. Any reproduction, modification, publication, transmission, transfer, or exploitation of any of the content, for personal or commercial use, whether in whole or in part, without written permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.
THE HISTORY OF THE DRIVE IN THEATER:
The DRIVE IN THEATER was the creation of Camden, New Jersey, chemical company magnate Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., whose family owned and operated the R.M. Hollingshead Corporation chemical plant in Camden. In 1932, Hollingshead conducted outdoor theater tests in his driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue in Riverton. After nailing a screen to trees in his backyard, he set a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car and put a radio behind the screen, testing different sound levels with his car windows down and up. Blocks under vehicles in the driveway enabled him to determine the size and spacing of ramps so all automobiles could have a clear view of the screen. Following these experiments, he applied August 6, 1932, for a patent of his invention, and he was given U.S. Patent 1,909,537 on May 16, 1933.
Hollingshead's drive-in opened in New Jersey June 6, 1933, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, a short distance from Cooper River Park. It offered 400 slots and a 40 by 50 ft (12 by 15 m) screen. He advertised his drive-in theater with the slogan, "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are." The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou film Wife Beware. The facility only operated three years, but during that time the concept caught on in other states. The April 15, 1934, opening of Shankweiler's Auto Park in Orefield, Pennsylvania, was followed by Galveston's Drive-In Short Reel Theater (July 5, 1934), the Pico Drive-In Theater at Pico and Westwood boulevards in Los Angeles(September 9, 1934) and the Weymouth Drive-In Theatre in Weymouth, Massachusetts (May 6, 1936). In 1937, three more opened in Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with another 12 during 1938 and 1939 in California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas and Virginia. Early drive-in theaters had to deal with noise pollution issues. The original Hollingshead drive-in had speakers installed on the tower itself which caused a sound delay affecting patrons at the rear of the drive-in's field. In 1935, the Pico Drive-in Theater attempted to solve this problem by having a row of speakers in front of the cars. In 1941, RCA introduced in-car speakers with individual volume controls which solved the noise pollution issue and provided satisfactory sound to drive-in patrons.
The drive-in's peak popularity came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly in rural areas, with some 4,000 drive-ins spread across the United States. Among its advantages was the fact that a family with a baby could take care of their child while watching a movie, while teenagers with access to autos found drive-ins ideal for dates. Revenue is more limited than regular theaters since showings can only begin at twilight. There were abortive attempts to create suitable conditions for daylight viewing such as large tent structures, but nothing viable was developed.
In the 1950s, the greater privacy afforded to patrons gave drive-ins a reputation as immoral, and they were labeled "passion pits" in the media. During the 1970s, some drive-ins changed from family fare to exploitation films, as a way to offset declining patronage and revenue. Also, during the 1970s, some drive-ins began to show pornographic movies in less family-centered time slots to bring in extra income. This allowed censored materials to be viewed by a wide audience, some for whom viewing was illegal, and it was reliant upon the whims of local ordinances controlling such material. It also required a relatively remote location distant from populated areas such as towns and cities.
Over time, the economics of real estate made the large property areas increasingly expensive for drive-ins to operate successfully. Land became far too valuable for businesses such as drive-ins, which in most cases were summer-only. Widespread adoption of daylight saving time subtracted an hour from outdoor evening viewing time. These changes and the advent of color televisions, VCRs and video rentals led to a sharp decline in the drive-in popularity. Drive-ins were subject to the whim of nature as inclement weather often caused
cancellations. They eventually lapsed into a quasi-novelty status with the remaining handful catering to a generally nostalgic audience, though many drive-ins continue to successfully operate in some areas. By 2013, drive-ins comprised only 1.5 percent of movie screens in the United States. At the industry's height, 25 percent of the nation's movie screens had been in a drive-in. As of 2012, a figure of 368 drive-ins has been published as for how many Drive-Ins remain in use through out the United States.
THIS DRIVE IN THEATER....
opened for business on August 12, 1949. As developed by Courtney Evans, on land owned by Mildred and Albert Steele, the drive-in, in 1949 was quite different than what remains of it today. tod During its first year of operations, two large speakers mounted on opposite sides of the screen broadcast the sound. When conditions were right, it was possible to hear the movie three miles away in the town. When the Steeles' purchased Mr. Evans’ interest in the operation in 1950, the sound system was replaced by in-car speakers.
The original screen was also quite different from the one that still stands today. Transplanted from Camden, New Jersey, it was constructed of fabric and could be raised or lowered on a supporting framework. A well-corroborated story has it, that one night some local boys cut the tethers during a show, sending the screen to the ground just as a plane in the picture went down in flames. This screen was eventually replaced by a rather small but more conventional movie screen, which was succeeded, in 1972, by the steel screen structure that remains today.
While the amenities of public accommodations have changed along with popular expectations, those found along rural roadsides in the 40’s and 50’s were often quite rudimentary by contemporary standards. The facilities featured at this Drive-In Theater during this period were no exception. Until the Roller Rink opened on the premises in 1954, ladies and gentlemen were offered restroom accommodations in outhouses concealed behind a rose trellis. When the adjacent roller rink opened in ‘54, women were offered accommodation inside and the men's outdoor facilities remained until 1968 when separate indoor restrooms were constructed.
During the drive-in’s early years, this states Blue Laws prohibited the exhibition of motion pictures on Sundays. To circumvent these restrictions, the Steeles presented music shows on a stage in front of the screen. Albert’s band, The Blue Hen Ramblers, was a familiar attraction, as was Pollie Peach Tree, a comedy routine between sets, featuring Mildred Steele. Bill Haley performed at the Drive-In, without his Comets, as did Tex Ritter.
In 1966, the Drive-In was leased to a Baltimore-based exhibition circuit for the next 20 years. Disappointed with the results from their initial engagements, R/C Theaters ventured into the burgeoning field of adult entertainment. Though tame by the standards of contemporary features, the adult films of the late 60’s were an instant success at the drive-in. By the mid 80’s, though, even this market had lost its vitality, and as occurred with so many outdoor theaters at the time, and the Drive-In closed its doors in 1986 as audiences migrated to a new generation of indoor theaters and patrons stayed at home choosing movies on cable and video cassette instead.
In 1996, veteran New England drive-in operator Don Brown leased the Drive-In Theater property, renovating and reopening it again and bringing it back to its glory days of mass-appeal drive-in entertainment. But, This would end in November 2008, and the last Movie to screened at this Drive-In was Madagascar 2, this is when the Steeles' heirs opted not to renew the lease in order to put the land on the market.
Much good this did the family as the land, 5 years later still sits Abandoned to this day...
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
In March 1941 Saab was given the task to design a better fighter than the Seversky Republic P-35s and Reggiane 2000s, at that time the only fighter aircraft Sweden was able or allowed to buy and the air force’s most modern fighters. Several other foreign designs, including the German Bf 109 or even the Japanese Mitsubishi Zero had also been considered.
Anyway, during the ongoing war the procurement of foreign equipment had no predictable future, and so a program for an indigenous fighter aircraft was launched the same year. This resulted in two different designs, which were both initially constructed around an imported German DB 603 engine – a deal which had become possible through the allowance of German transport flights to Norway over Swedish territory, a reason why no Allied equipment was sold to Sweden.
The resulting designs, the L-21 and L-23, differed considerably from each other. The Saab L-21 was a futuristic twin-boom pusher. This unconventional layout was a technological risk, with ejection seat and all, but it was expected to exploit the DB603 engine to the max, with a low-drag airframe (e .g. with a totally buried radiator installation inside of the inner wings) and a well-balanced center of gravity, which was expected to improve handling and turn radius. It was the favored design of Saab’s engineers.
As a fall-back option, though, the L-23 was added. It was a more conservative design with the same DB 603 engine, but with the engine in the classic nose position, a tunnel radiator under the rear fuselage, low tapered wings and a conventional tail. The overall outline resembled the P-51B/C Mustang. Most interestingly, the J 23 was to have a Bofors ejection seat, too, despite its conventional layout.
In December 1941 both designs were approved for prototypes, so that a direct comparison of both layouts could be made. The first of three J 21 prototypes flew on 30 July 1943, while the first three J 23 fighters followed on 10 August, just two weeks later.
Flight tests and evaluation continued until mid-1944 and, despite less weight and size, the J 23 turned out to be fast (Max. speed 626 km/h (388 mph) with the DB 603), but considerably less maneuverable than the J 21, which in itself was also not a perfect aircraft and frequently faced overheating problems.
Faced with two mediocre designs and an urgent need for a modern fighter, it was eventually decided to go ahead with the J 21 for serial production, but a pre-production batch of upgraded J 23 was also ordered for field tests and further development. In the meantime, Sweden had acquired rights to produce the DB 605 in license, and the new fighter was to be adapted to this more modern and powerful engine – it was hoped that the new engine would improve the J 23’s performance, and it was also fitted to the production J 21.
This re-engined variant was the J 23A, of which twelve aircraft were constructed at the main plant in Trollhättan and delivered from August 1945, too late to be involved in typical interception duties at the Swedish borders.
Deliveries of the favored J 21 started in December of the same year. The latter’s field performance turned out to be unsuited for the interceptor role, and the cooling problems persisted. Relegated mainly into the bomber and CAS role (the J 21 turned out to be a passable ground attack aircraft and a stable gun platform), the limitation of the J 21’s pusher design led to a revival of the front-engine J 23.
The resulting J 23B became the aircraft’s actual production variant, incorporating many improvements which had been developed and tested on the prototypes and the pre-production J 23As. These included aerodynamic modifications like a different airfoil on the outer wings and a lowered horizontal stabilizer, coupled with an extended rear fuselage for better directional stability and a slimmed-down radiator fairing for less drag. These machines were delivered from late 1946 on, and a total of forty-six J 23B airframes were produced until early 1948.
In service, the lighter J 23Bs proved to be a better interceptor than the J 21, with a higher top speed and rate of climb, but its handling was less responsive than the pusher aircraft with the same engine and armament.
Overall the J 23B was regarded as inferior to the very similar J 26 (the P-51D) in almost any respect, and the J 23B was never really popular with its flight or ground crews. Consequently, the J 23Bs active fighter career was short and the machines were only operated by the F 16 fighter wing and the F 20 Air Force Academy, both based at Uppsala Airfield, primarily used for advanced weapon and air combat training.
A new evaluation of the J 21 and the J 23 in 1947 led to the decision to retain the J 21 series but to consider the modification of the airframe to accommodate a jet engine. While production line J 21A series aircraft were first selected for conversion, the initial piston-engine version continued in production in five series "batches" that were completed in 1948–49.
Further J 23B production was not resumed, instead the J 26 and J 27 were procured. Anyway, the age of the piston-engine fighter came soon to a close and the Swedish Air Force entered the jet age. Consequently, the J 23B was already phased out, together with the J 21, after 1954.
General characteristics:
Crew: one
Length: 9.58 m (31 ft 4 in)
Wingspan: 11.3 m (37 ft 8 in)
Height: 3.96 (13 ft 0 in)
Wing area: 20.00 m² (215.28 ft²)
Empty weight: 2,535 kg (5,583 lb)
Loaded weight: 3,445 kg (7,588 lb)
Max. take-off weight: 3,663 kg (8,068 lb)
Powerplant:
1× Daimler-Benz liquid-cooled, supercharged, 60° inverted V12 DB 605B engine,
rated at 1,085 kW (1,455 hp / 1,475 PS) and license-built by SFA.
Performance:
Maximum speed: 680 km/h (367 knots, 422 mph)
Cruise speed: 495 km/h (265 knots, 308 mph)
Range: 750 km (466 mi)
Service ceiling: 11,200 m (36,685 ft)
Rate of climb: 17 m/s (3,340 ft/min)
Armament:
1× engine-mounted 20 mm Hispano-Suiza HS.404 or Bofors cannon,
firing through the propeller hub
4× 13 mm Bofors-built Colt machine guns in the outer wings nose
Underwing hardpoints for various bombs, drop tanks and unguided rockets
The kit and its assembly:
The “Swedish Season” continues! The Saab 23 is another “phantom of the past”, a real world design that never left the drawing board. The J 23 actually started as an alternative to the J 21, but was discarded in late 1941 in favor of the more promising, yet bigger and heavier, pusher design. But that would not stop modelers from trying to build one, even though I have never seen a model of this aircraft? Having recently tried to build a Saab 27 fighter caught me in the right mood for another whiffy Swedish design, so I took a chance on the J 23, too.
At first glance you can mistake the J 23 for a P-51B with an engine from a late Bf 109, some sources describe it as “a Swedish Messerschmitt”. But that’s only superficial, much like the later Griffon-powered J 27 project which can be described as a “Super Spitfire”, but this does not do justice to the aircraft’s construction.
Both were independent developments, even though the P-51 (some early specimen were forced to land in Sweden and closely examined) certainly had a massive impact on both designs.
Anyway, the information basis surrounding the J 23 is worse than the J 27’s, and I only had rather vague profile drawings/sketches at hand for reference. A basis model was also hard to find: the rear section from a P-51B (in this case an Intech kit from Poland) was settled, since the Mustang’s cockpit shape, dorsal section and fin come really close to the J 23. But you cannot simply mate a P-51 with a Bf 109 nose, it would result in a rather wacky Mustang-thing because the proportions are not right.
Finding a good solution was not easy, and I was lucky to find a Hasegawa Ki-61 in the stash – it has a German engine (an earlier DB 601, though) and an overall layout similar to the P-51B. But the Ki-61 is considerably larger than a Bf 109, more in the P-51’s size class. Despite many detail modifications I decided to mate these unlikely aircraft for the J 23s basis – engraved panel lines on both kits made the combination less obvious, too.
The InTech P-51B gave its tail and the cockpit section (excluding the radiator tunnel and the wing roots), cut away from the rest of the Mustang fuselage with a Z-shaped cut. With a matching cut on the Ki-61’s fuselage, the engine and the whole wing/fuselage intersection were used. Styrene strips held the fuselage sections in place, on the outside the seams were later blended with nitrous compound putty. One benefit of this solution is that the OOB P-51 canopy could be used (even though the rear end fit necessitated some body work), and the resulting cockpit position was just as far forward as on the J 23, right above the wings. As a consequence the rear fuselage behind the cockpit appears to be rather long, but that is AFAIK correct, the J 23 had these slightly odd proportions!
For the J 23’s DB 605 engine a different, bigger spinner had to be mounted – scratched from a massive PZL 23 spinner and single blades (from the Hasegawa Ki-61), together with a metal axis and a styrene tube adapter inside of the nose. Some putty work was necessary to fair over the Ki-61 guns on the cowling, the typical DB 601 front bulge and blend the bigger, new spinner to the rest of the fuselage, but the result looks O.K.
The Ki-61’s original wings and landing gear could, thanks to the original fuselage section from the Hasegawa kit, be carried over and easily mounted, even though the wing tips were clipped for a square, Mustang-esque shape (the J 23’s look in all illustrations I’ve seen like upscaled Bf 109E wings).
The InTech P-51’s horizontal stabilizers were used, but for a J 23 they had to be placed in a different position: further back (so that wedges for the vertical rudder had to be cut out) and considerably lower, necessitating some (more) body work to hide the original attachment points. The new position adds to the impression of an extended fuselage section behind the cockpit, even though the P-51 donor fuselage section is only a little longer than the Ki-61’s. All tail surface outlines were slightly modified, too.
The J 23’s typical, shallow radiator tunnel had to be scratched, the semi-buried construction sits far behind the wings’ training edge. In an initial step, the removed Ki-61 radiator’s gap as well as the P-51 tail wheel well were faired over with styrene sheet and new intake/outlet ramps integrated into the lower rear fuselage. The tunnel itself is the narrow, aerodynamic fairing of a Boulton Paul Defiant’s machine guns behind the turret (raised when not in use), left over from a Pavla kit, opened at both ends.
As a consequence of the new and long radiator tunnel, the P-51 tail wheel well was moved about 5mm further back and the fuselage profile under the tail fin re-shaped.
One of the final steps was the cockpit interior, because I was not sure concerning the relative position of the P-51’s canopy (cut into three pieces for open display) and dashboard and the Ki-61’s cockpit floor panel and seat. But both turned out to match relatively well, and I added a tank and radio dummy behind the seat in order to prevent a clear view into the rear fuselage.
The landing gear was taken OOB from the Ki-61 – it looks similar to the real J 23 arrangement, so I stuck with it. The tail wheel comes from the InTech P-51, just the covers were scratched for the re-located well.
All gun barrels on spinner and wings are hollow steel needles, no ordnance was hung under the wings, even though the Ki-61 hardpoints were retained. After all, it’s a fighter aircraft.
Painting and markings:
Once more a classic, if not conservative, livery for a fictional aircraft – and in this case I chose the simple olivgrön/ljust blågrå camouflage of the late Fourties, coupled with contemporary color-coded letters identifying the individual aircraft and its squadron within the Flygflöttilj group.
The uniform upper surfaces were painted with RAF Dark Green (Humbrol 163). This tone has an olive drab touch and comes IMHO pretty close to the original Swedish color, the frequently recommended FS 34079 is IMHO too blue-ish. For the underside I used Humbrol 87 (Steel Gray), which is a blue-greenish gray. The authentic tone would be FS 36270, but on a model it appears much too dark, so that the lighter Steel Gray is a handy and individual alternative.
A light black ink was applied in order to emphasize the panel lines, some more depth was added through dry-painted panels with lighter shades of the basic colors (in this case, Humbrol 155 and 128).
The cockpit interior was painted in dark gray (Humbrol 32), while the landing gear and the wells became Aluminum (Humbrol 56).
As an aircraft of the air staff flight, this J 23 received a white spinner and a white code letter on the tail. These and other markings came from various sources and spare decal sheets. Some extra color was added with red warning markings on the wings above the flaps, plus some visual markings - all made with generic decal stripes. The cock nose art is a personal addition - taken from a Spanish Bf 109D, but AFAIK such personal markings were not uncommon on Swedish Air Force aircraft in the post WWII era.
An eye-catcher and some variety on the otherwise simple green/gray livery are white high-viz markings on the wing tips and a wide fuselage band. Such additional markings were frequently used in the post WWII-era during exercises, training or public displays. Styles varied considerably, though, between “color blocks” and wide single bands which I used (seen on a J 21) and even dense, thin zebra stripes on wings and fuselage. In this case, the white markings were painted onto wings and fuselage (Humbrol 34).
Since most panel lines on the fuselage were lost I painted some new ones with a soft pencil. Finally, after some gun soot and exhaust stains made with grinded graphite as well as some dry-brushed silver on the wings’ leading edges and around the cockpit were added, the kit received a coating with matt acrylic varnish.
Another scratch build of an obscure Swedish aircraft that never reached the hardware stage – and pretty successful, IMHO. This sleek J 23 model looks just as harmless and innocent, but involved massive construction work in almost every area as the kitbashed J 27 before. It’s actually the first model rendition of the J 23 I have seen so far – and another funny fact is that this “Swedish Messerschmitt” was built without any Bf 109 part at all!
The Societé Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne better known internationally by the acronym SABENA, was the national airline of Belgium from 1923 to 2001 when the company went into liquidation on November 6th, 2001. During 1984 2 Airbus A.310-200s were introduced on routes that had high passenger density (a third plane was later leased), followed few year later by 2 of the series -300.
OO-SCC (c/n 437 series -322) was the third Airbus A.310, the first of the series -300, delivered to SABENA in March 1987. Retired in 1997, the plane was sold to leasing company ILFC and was firstly leased to Passaredo in Brasil as PP-PSD from December 1997. Returned to the lessor in August 2000, the plane went on lease in Indonesia to Region Air/Awair from December 2000 to April 2001. Next operator was Vietnamese company Pacific Airlines form July 2001 to August 2002. In August 2002 AMC Airlines leased the plane as SU-BOW. The plane was immediately sub-leased to Air Mali and returned to AMC in January 2003. In December 2005 the plane ws sub-leased again to Sudan Airways as ST-AST. The plane was retired and stored at KTK during year 2010.
Slide taken at BRU in April 1988. The plane shows the SABENA color scheme of the '80s.
Γαλλική εταιρεία για την αποξήρανση και εκμετάλλευση της λίμνης Κωπαΐδας (Compagnie française pour le desséchement et l’exploitation du lac Copaïs), περίπου 1880.
Gallica
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53020965z/f1.item.r=copais
ZOOM
drive.google.com/file/d/1cYJl8pVfb9NTSVIJr2WbOxaajOGhSBy5...
COMPAGNIE FRANÇAISE POUR LE DESSÉCHEMENT ET L’EXPLOITATION DU LAC COPAÏS
Grèce
par Corinne Krouck et Alain Léger
www.entreprises-coloniales.fr/proche-orient/Cie_frse_du_l...
Les entreprises coloniales françaiseS
PROCHE ORIENT
www.entreprises-coloniales.fr/proche-orient.html
Δήμος Ορχομενού
www.orchomenos.gr/shmeia-endiaferontos/copais/
ΣΥΝΟΠΤΙΚΗ ΕΚΘΕΣΙΣ. ΤΗΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΟΥ. ΤΗΣ ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟΥ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑΣ. ΤΗΣ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ ΚΩΠΑΪΔΟΣ. ΑΘΗΝΑ! 1951. Συλλογή ΔΗΜΟΣΙΑΣ ΚΕΝΤΡΙΚΗΣ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗΣ ΛΙΒΑΔΕΙΑΣ
livadia.publiclibrary.gr/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bibl...
ΣΥΝΟΠΤΙΚΗ ΕΚΘΕΣΙΣ. ΤΗΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΟΥ. ΤΗΣ ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟΥ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑΣ. ΤΗΣ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ ΚΩΠΑΪΔΟΣ. ΑΘΗΝΑ! 1951
drive.google.com/file/d/1bnhR8Yp3g2cHdrJC_QlEOc-0CKEnhpPE...
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I was originally enrolled as a SHUTTERSTOCK contributor on January 28th 2019. Shutterstock is an American stock photography company with headquarters in New York City, founded in 2003 by Photographer Jon Oringer. With a library in excess of 200 million royalty free stock photographs, I am delighted, and most grateful to have been accepted into the fold.
Having been passionate about photography since the age of seven years old, with a box brownie and black and white 120 roll film, these days I take a far more leisurely approach to my photographic exploits, a Nikon D850 FX Pro body as my trusted companion, I travel light with less constraints and more emphasis on the pure capture of the beauty that I see, more akin to my original persuits and goals some five decades previously when starting out. I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK, and the 28.141+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.
***** Selected for sale in the SHUTTERSTOCK COMMERCIAL COLLECTION Image ID:1308216616 on February 10th 2019.
This photograph became my 128th frame to be selected for sale on SHUTTERSTOCK, and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.
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This photograph was taken at an altitude of Eight hundred and metres, at 14:47am on Thursday 12th May 2016 off the Alaska Highway 1 at Swift River, which begins in Yukon Territory,and flows Southwest into British Columbia to it's mouth at the East of Teslin Lake on the Teslin River system in Canada.
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Nikon D800 24mm 1/100s f/10.0 iso100 RAW (14Bit) Hand held. Nikon back focus button enabled. AF-C Continuous point focus with 3-D tracking. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.Nikon AF Fine tune on (+9).
Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Nikon DK-17M 1.2x Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC card. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW Photo/ 15.4" Notebook Backpack camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.
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LATITUDE: N 59d 56m 0.45s
LONGITUDE: W 131d 45m 25.54s
ALTITUDE: 800.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB
PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 36.58MB
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PROCESSING POWER:
Nikon D800 Firmware versions A 1.10 B 1.10 L 2.009 (Lens distortion control version 2)
HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB DATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX2 Version 2.10.3 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.
Ganesha, also spelled Ganesh, and also known as Ganapati and Vinayaka, is a widely worshipped deity in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal. Hindu sects worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains, Buddhists, and beyond India.
Although he is known by many attributes, Ganesha's elephant head makes him easy to identify. Ganesha is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom. As the god of beginnings, he is honoured at the start of rituals and ceremonies. Ganesha is also invoked as patron of letters and learning during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.
Ganesha emerged as a distinct deity in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, during the Gupta Period, although he inherited traits from Vedic and pre-Vedic precursors. He was formally included among the five primary deities of Smartism (a Hindu denomination) in the 9th century. A sect of devotees called the Ganapatya arose, who identified Ganesha as the supreme deity. The principal scriptures dedicated to Ganesha are the Ganesha Purana, the Mudgala Purana, and the Ganapati Atharvashirsa.
ETYMOLOGY AND OTHER NAMES
Ganesha has been ascribed many other titles and epithets, including Ganapati and Vighneshvara. The Hindu title of respect Shri is often added before his name. One popular way Ganesha is worshipped is by chanting a Ganesha Sahasranama, a litany of "a thousand names of Ganesha". Each name in the sahasranama conveys a different meaning and symbolises a different aspect of Ganesha. At least two different versions of the Ganesha Sahasranama exist; one version is drawn from the Ganesha Purana, a Hindu scripture venerating Ganesha.
The name Ganesha is a Sanskrit compound, joining the words gana, meaning a group, multitude, or categorical system and isha, meaning lord or master. The word gaņa when associated with Ganesha is often taken to refer to the gaņas, a troop of semi-divine beings that form part of the retinue of Shiva. The term more generally means a category, class, community, association, or corporation. Some commentators interpret the name "Lord of the Gaņas" to mean "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of created categories", such as the elements. Ganapati, a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord". The Amarakosha, an early Sanskrit lexicon, lists eight synonyms of Ganesha : Vinayaka, Vighnarāja (equivalent to Vighnesha), Dvaimātura (one who has two mothers), Gaṇādhipa (equivalent to Ganapati and Ganesha), Ekadanta (one who has one tusk), Heramba, Lambodara (one who has a pot belly, or, literally, one who has a hanging belly), and Gajanana; having the face of an elephant).
Vinayaka is a common name for Ganesha that appears in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. This name is reflected in the naming of the eight famous Ganesha temples in Maharashtra known as the Ashtavinayak (aṣṭavināyaka). The names Vighnesha and Vighneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) refers to his primary function in Hindu theology as the master and remover of obstacles (vighna).
A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pillai. A. K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pillai means a "child" while pillaiyar means a "noble child". He adds that the words pallu, pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify "tooth or tusk", also "elephant tooth or tusk". Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant "the young of the elephant", because the Pali word pillaka means "a young elephant".
In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne, derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka. The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikhanet or Phra Phikhanesuan, both of which are derived from Vara Vighnesha and Vara Vighneshvara respectively, whereas the name Khanet (from Ganesha) is rather rare.
In Sri Lanka, in the North-Central and North Western areas with predominantly Buddhist population, Ganesha is known as Aiyanayaka Deviyo, while in other Singhala Buddhist areas he is known as Gana deviyo.
ICONOGRAPHY
Ganesha is a popular figure in Indian art. Unlike those of some deities, representations of Ganesha show wide variations and distinct patterns changing over time. He may be portrayed standing, dancing, heroically taking action against demons, playing with his family as a boy, sitting down or on an elevated seat, or engaging in a range of contemporary situations.
Ganesha images were prevalent in many parts of India by the 6th century. The 13th century statue pictured is typical of Ganesha statuary from 900–1200, after Ganesha had been well-established as an independent deity with his own sect. This example features some of Ganesha's common iconographic elements. A virtually identical statue has been dated between 973–1200 by Paul Martin-Dubost, and another similar statue is dated c. 12th century by Pratapaditya Pal. Ganesha has the head of an elephant and a big belly. This statue has four arms, which is common in depictions of Ganesha. He holds his own broken tusk in his lower-right hand and holds a delicacy, which he samples with his trunk, in his lower-left hand. The motif of Ganesha turning his trunk sharply to his left to taste a sweet in his lower-left hand is a particularly archaic feature. A more primitive statue in one of the Ellora Caves with this general form has been dated to the 7th century. Details of the other hands are difficult to make out on the statue shown. In the standard configuration, Ganesha typically holds an axe or a goad in one upper arm and a pasha (noose) in the other upper arm.
The influence of this old constellation of iconographic elements can still be seen in contemporary representations of Ganesha. In one modern form, the only variation from these old elements is that the lower-right hand does not hold the broken tusk but is turned towards the viewer in a gesture of protection or fearlessness (abhaya mudra). The same combination of four arms and attributes occurs in statues of Ganesha dancing, which is a very popular theme.
COMMON ATTRIBUTES
Ganesha has been represented with the head of an elephant since the early stages of his appearance in Indian art. Puranic myths provide many explanations for how he got his elephant head. One of his popular forms, Heramba-Ganapati, has five elephant heads, and other less-common variations in the number of heads are known. While some texts say that Ganesha was born with an elephant head, he acquires the head later in most stories. The most recurrent motif in these stories is that Ganesha was created by Parvati using clay to protect her and Shiva beheaded him when Ganesha came between Shiva and Parvati. Shiva then replaced Ganesha's original head with that of an elephant. Details of the battle and where the replacement head came from vary from source to source. Another story says that Ganesha was created directly by Shiva's laughter. Because Shiva considered Ganesha too alluring, he gave him the head of an elephant and a protruding belly.
Ganesha's earliest name was Ekadanta (One Tusked), referring to his single whole tusk, the other being broken. Some of the earliest images of Ganesha show him holding his broken tusk. The importance of this distinctive feature is reflected in the Mudgala Purana, which states that the name of Ganesha's second incarnation is Ekadanta. Ganesha's protruding belly appears as a distinctive attribute in his earliest statuary, which dates to the Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries). This feature is so important that, according to the Mudgala Purana, two different incarnations of Ganesha use names based on it: Lambodara (Pot Belly, or, literally, Hanging Belly) and Mahodara (Great Belly). Both names are Sanskrit compounds describing his belly. The Brahmanda Purana says that Ganesha has the name Lambodara because all the universes (i.e., cosmic eggs) of the past, present, and future are present in him. The number of Ganesha's arms varies; his best-known forms have between two and sixteen arms. Many depictions of Ganesha feature four arms, which is mentioned in Puranic sources and codified as a standard form in some iconographic texts. His earliest images had two arms. Forms with 14 and 20 arms appeared in Central India during the 9th and the 10th centuries. The serpent is a common feature in Ganesha iconography and appears in many forms. According to the Ganesha Purana, Ganesha wrapped the serpent Vasuki around his neck. Other depictions of snakes include use as a sacred thread wrapped around the stomach as a belt, held in a hand, coiled at the ankles, or as a throne. Upon Ganesha's forehead may be a third eye or the Shaivite sectarian mark , which consists of three horizontal lines. The Ganesha Purana prescribes a tilaka mark as well as a crescent moon on the forehead. A distinct form of Ganesha called Bhalachandra includes that iconographic element. Ganesha is often described as red in color. Specific colors are associated with certain forms. Many examples of color associations with specific meditation forms are prescribed in the Sritattvanidhi, a treatise on Hindu iconography. For example, white is associated with his representations as Heramba-Ganapati and Rina-Mochana-Ganapati (Ganapati Who Releases from Bondage). Ekadanta-Ganapati is visualized as blue during meditation in that form.
VAHANAS
The earliest Ganesha images are without a vahana (mount/vehicle). Of the eight incarnations of Ganesha described in the Mudgala Purana, Ganesha uses a mouse (shrew) in five of them, a lion in his incarnation as Vakratunda, a peacock in his incarnation as Vikata, and Shesha, the divine serpent, in his incarnation as Vighnaraja. Mohotkata uses a lion, Mayūreśvara uses a peacock, Dhumraketu uses a horse, and Gajanana uses a mouse, in the four incarnations of Ganesha listed in the Ganesha Purana. Jain depictions of Ganesha show his vahana variously as a mouse, elephant, tortoise, ram, or peacock.
Ganesha is often shown riding on or attended by a mouse, shrew or rat. Martin-Dubost says that the rat began to appear as the principal vehicle in sculptures of Ganesha in central and western India during the 7th century; the rat was always placed close to his feet. The mouse as a mount first appears in written sources in the Matsya Purana and later in the Brahmananda Purana and Ganesha Purana, where Ganesha uses it as his vehicle in his last incarnation. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa includes a meditation verse on Ganesha that describes the mouse appearing on his flag. The names Mūṣakavāhana (mouse-mount) and Ākhuketana (rat-banner) appear in the Ganesha Sahasranama.
The mouse is interpreted in several ways. According to Grimes, "Many, if not most of those who interpret Gaṇapati's mouse, do so negatively; it symbolizes tamoguṇa as well as desire". Along these lines, Michael Wilcockson says it symbolizes those who wish to overcome desires and be less selfish. Krishan notes that the rat is destructive and a menace to crops. The Sanskrit word mūṣaka (mouse) is derived from the root mūṣ (stealing, robbing). It was essential to subdue the rat as a destructive pest, a type of vighna (impediment) that needed to be overcome. According to this theory, showing Ganesha as master of the rat demonstrates his function as Vigneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) and gives evidence of his possible role as a folk grāma-devatā (village deity) who later rose to greater prominence. Martin-Dubost notes a view that the rat is a symbol suggesting that Ganesha, like the rat, penetrates even the most secret places.
ASSOCIATIONS
OBSTACLES
Ganesha is Vighneshvara or Vighnaraja or Vighnaharta (Marathi), the Lord of Obstacles, both of a material and spiritual order. He is popularly worshipped as a remover of obstacles, though traditionally he also places obstacles in the path of those who need to be checked. Paul Courtright says that "his task in the divine scheme of things, his dharma, is to place and remove obstacles. It is his particular territory, the reason for his creation."
Krishan notes that some of Ganesha's names reflect shadings of multiple roles that have evolved over time. Dhavalikar ascribes the quick ascension of Ganesha in the Hindu pantheon, and the emergence of the Ganapatyas, to this shift in emphasis from vighnakartā (obstacle-creator) to vighnahartā (obstacle-averter). However, both functions continue to be vital to his character.
BUDDHI (KNOWLEDGE)
Ganesha is considered to be the Lord of letters and learning. In Sanskrit, the word buddhi is a feminine noun that is variously translated as intelligence, wisdom, or intellect. The concept of buddhi is closely associated with the personality of Ganesha, especially in the Puranic period, when many stories stress his cleverness and love of intelligence. One of Ganesha's names in the Ganesha Purana and the Ganesha Sahasranama is Buddhipriya. This name also appears in a list of 21 names at the end of the Ganesha Sahasranama that Ganesha says are especially important. The word priya can mean "fond of", and in a marital context it can mean "lover" or "husband", so the name may mean either "Fond of Intelligence" or "Buddhi's Husband".
AUM
Ganesha is identified with the Hindu mantra Aum, also spelled Om. The term oṃkārasvarūpa (Aum is his form), when identified with Ganesha, refers to the notion that he personifies the primal sound. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa attests to this association. Chinmayananda translates the relevant passage as follows:
(O Lord Ganapati!) You are (the Trinity) Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa. You are Indra. You are fire [Agni] and air [Vāyu]. You are the sun [Sūrya] and the moon [Chandrama]. You are Brahman. You are (the three worlds) Bhuloka [earth], Antariksha-loka [space], and Swargaloka [heaven]. You are Om. (That is to say, You are all this).
Some devotees see similarities between the shape of Ganesha's body in iconography and the shape of Aum in the Devanāgarī and Tamil scripts.
FIRST CHAKRA
According to Kundalini yoga, Ganesha resides in the first chakra, called Muladhara (mūlādhāra). Mula means "original, main"; adhara means "base, foundation". The muladhara chakra is the principle on which the manifestation or outward expansion of primordial Divine Force rests. This association is also attested to in the Ganapati Atharvashirsa. Courtright translates this passage as follows: "[O Ganesha,] You continually dwell in the sacral plexus at the base of the spine [mūlādhāra cakra]." Thus, Ganesha has a permanent abode in every being at the Muladhara. Ganesha holds, supports and guides all other chakras, thereby "governing the forces that propel the wheel of life".
FAMILY AND CONSORTS
Though Ganesha is popularly held to be the son of Shiva and Parvati, the Puranic myths give different versions about his birth. In some he was created by Parvati, in another he was created by Shiva and Parvati, in another he appeared mysteriously and was discovered by Shiva and Parvati or he was born from the elephant headed goddess Malini after she drank Parvati's bath water that had been thrown in the river.
The family includes his brother the war god Kartikeya, who is also called Subramanya, Skanda, Murugan and other names. Regional differences dictate the order of their births. In northern India, Skanda is generally said to be the elder, while in the south, Ganesha is considered the first born. In northern India, Skanda was an important martial deity from about 500 BCE to about 600 CE, when worship of him declined significantly in northern India. As Skanda fell, Ganesha rose. Several stories tell of sibling rivalry between the brothers and may reflect sectarian tensions.
Ganesha's marital status, the subject of considerable scholarly review, varies widely in mythological stories. One pattern of myths identifies Ganesha as an unmarried brahmacari. This view is common in southern India and parts of northern India. Another pattern associates him with the concepts of Buddhi (intellect), Siddhi (spiritual power), and Riddhi (prosperity); these qualities are sometimes personified as goddesses, said to be Ganesha's wives. He also may be shown with a single consort or a nameless servant (Sanskrit: daşi). Another pattern connects Ganesha with the goddess of culture and the arts, Sarasvati or Śarda (particularly in Maharashtra). He is also associated with the goddess of luck and prosperity, Lakshmi. Another pattern, mainly prevalent in the Bengal region, links Ganesha with the banana tree, Kala Bo.
The Shiva Purana says that Ganesha had begotten two sons: Kşema (prosperity) and Lābha (profit). In northern Indian variants of this story, the sons are often said to be Śubha (auspiciouness) and Lābha. The 1975 Hindi film Jai Santoshi Maa shows Ganesha married to Riddhi and Siddhi and having a daughter named Santoshi Ma, the goddess of satisfaction. This story has no Puranic basis, but Anita Raina Thapan and Lawrence Cohen cite Santoshi Ma's cult as evidence of Ganesha's continuing evolution as a popular deity.
WOSHIP AND FESTIVALS
Ganesha is worshipped on many religious and secular occasions; especially at the beginning of ventures such as buying a vehicle or starting a business. K.N. Somayaji says, "there can hardly be a [Hindu] home [in India] which does not house an idol of Ganapati. [..] Ganapati, being the most popular deity in India, is worshipped by almost all castes and in all parts of the country". Devotees believe that if Ganesha is propitiated, he grants success, prosperity and protection against adversity.
Ganesha is a non-sectarian deity, and Hindus of all denominations invoke him at the beginning of prayers, important undertakings, and religious ceremonies. Dancers and musicians, particularly in southern India, begin performances of arts such as the Bharatnatyam dance with a prayer to Ganesha. Mantras such as Om Shri Gaṇeshāya Namah (Om, salutation to the Illustrious Ganesha) are often used. One of the most famous mantras associated with Ganesha is Om Gaṃ Ganapataye Namah (Om, Gaṃ, Salutation to the Lord of Hosts).
Devotees offer Ganesha sweets such as modaka and small sweet balls (laddus). He is often shown carrying a bowl of sweets, called a modakapātra. Because of his identification with the color red, he is often worshipped with red sandalwood paste (raktacandana) or red flowers. Dūrvā grass (Cynodon dactylon) and other materials are also used in his worship.
Festivals associated with Ganesh are Ganesh Chaturthi or Vināyaka chaturthī in the śuklapakṣa (the fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of bhādrapada (August/September) and the Gaṇeśa jayanti (Gaṇeśa's birthday) celebrated on the cathurthī of the śuklapakṣa (fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of māgha (January/February)."
GANESH CHATURTI
An annual festival honours Ganesha for ten days, starting on Ganesha Chaturthi, which typically falls in late August or early September. The festival begins with people bringing in clay idols of Ganesha, symbolising Ganesha's visit. The festival culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi, when idols (murtis) of Ganesha are immersed in the most convenient body of water. Some families have a tradition of immersion on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, or 7th day. In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak transformed this annual Ganesha festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. He did so "to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropriate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them" in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra. Because of Ganesha's wide appeal as "the god for Everyman", Tilak chose him as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule. Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavilions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day. Today, Hindus across India celebrate the Ganapati festival with great fervour, though it is most popular in the state of Maharashtra. The festival also assumes huge proportions in Mumbai, Pune, and in the surrounding belt of Ashtavinayaka temples.
TEMPLES
In Hindu temples, Ganesha is depicted in various ways: as an acolyte or subordinate deity (pãrśva-devatã); as a deity related to the principal deity (parivāra-devatã); or as the principal deity of the temple (pradhāna), treated similarly as the highest gods of the Hindu pantheon. As the god of transitions, he is placed at the doorway of many Hindu temples to keep out the unworthy, which is analogous to his role as Parvati’s doorkeeper. In addition, several shrines are dedicated to Ganesha himself, of which the Ashtavinayak (lit. "eight Ganesha (shrines)") in Maharashtra are particularly well known. Located within a 100-kilometer radius of the city of Pune, each of these eight shrines celebrates a particular form of Ganapati, complete with its own lore and legend. The eight shrines are: Morgaon, Siddhatek, Pali, Mahad, Theur, Lenyadri, Ozar and Ranjangaon.
There are many other important Ganesha temples at the following locations: Wai in Maharashtra; Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh; Jodhpur, Nagaur and Raipur (Pali) in Rajasthan; Baidyanath in Bihar; Baroda, Dholaka, and Valsad in Gujarat and Dhundiraj Temple in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Prominent Ganesha temples in southern India include the following: Kanipakam in Chittoor; the Jambukeśvara Temple at Tiruchirapalli; at Rameshvaram and Suchindram in Tamil Nadu; at Malliyur, Kottarakara, Pazhavangadi, Kasargod in Kerala, Hampi, and Idagunji in Karnataka; and Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh.
T. A. Gopinatha notes, "Every village however small has its own image of Vighneśvara (Vigneshvara) with or without a temple to house it in. At entrances of villages and forts, below pīpaḹa (Sacred fig) trees [...], in a niche [...] in temples of Viṣṇu (Vishnu) as well as Śiva (Shiva) and also in separate shrines specially constructed in Śiva temples [...]; the figure of Vighneśvara is invariably seen." Ganesha temples have also been built outside of India, including southeast Asia, Nepal (including the four Vinayaka shrines in the Kathmandu valley), and in several western countries.
RISE TO PROMINENCE
FIRST APEARANCE
Ganesha appeared in his classic form as a clearly recognizable deity with well-defined iconographic attributes in the early 4th to 5th centuries. Shanti Lal Nagar says that the earliest known iconic image of Ganesha is in the niche of the Shiva temple at Bhumra, which has been dated to the Gupta period. His independent cult appeared by about the 10th century. Narain summarizes the controversy between devotees and academics regarding the development of Ganesha as follows:
What is inscrutable is the somewhat dramatic appearance of Gaņeśa on the historical scene. His antecedents are not clear. His wide acceptance and popularity, which transcend sectarian and territorial limits, are indeed amazing. On the one hand there is the pious belief of the orthodox devotees in Gaņeśa's Vedic origins and in the Purāṇic explanations contained in the confusing, but nonetheless interesting, mythology. On the other hand there are doubts about the existence of the idea and the icon of this deity" before the fourth to fifth century A.D. ... [I]n my opinion, indeed there is no convincing evidence of the existence of this divinity prior to the fifth century.
POSSIBLE INFLUENCES
Courtright reviews various speculative theories about the early history of Ganesha, including supposed tribal traditions and animal cults, and dismisses all of them in this way:
In the post 600 BC period there is evidence of people and places named after the animal. The motif appears on coins and sculptures.
Thapan's book on the development of Ganesha devotes a chapter to speculations about the role elephants had in early India but concludes that, "although by the second century CE the elephant-headed yakṣa form exists it cannot be presumed to represent Gaṇapati-Vināyaka. There is no evidence of a deity by this name having an elephant or elephant-headed form at this early stage. Gaṇapati-Vināyaka had yet to make his debut."
One theory of the origin of Ganesha is that he gradually came to prominence in connection with the four Vinayakas (Vināyakas). In Hindu mythology, the Vināyakas were a group of four troublesome demons who created obstacles and difficulties but who were easily propitiated. The name Vināyaka is a common name for Ganesha both in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. Krishan is one of the academics who accepts this view, stating flatly of Ganesha, "He is a non-vedic god. His origin is to be traced to the four Vināyakas, evil spirits, of the Mānavagŗhyasūtra (7th–4th century BCE) who cause various types of evil and suffering". Depictions of elephant-headed human figures, which some identify with Ganesha, appear in Indian art and coinage as early as the 2nd century. According to Ellawala, the elephant-headed Ganesha as lord of the Ganas was known to the people of Sri Lanka in the early pre-Christian era.
A metal plate depiction of Ganesha had been discovered in 1993, in Iran, it dated back to 1,200 BCE. Another one was discovered much before, in Lorestan Province of Iran.
First Ganesha's terracotta images are from 1st century CE found in Ter, Pal, Verrapuram and Chandraketugarh. These figures are small, with elephant head, two arms, and chubby physique. The earliest Ganesha icons in stone were carved in Mathura during Kushan times (2nd-3rd centuries CE).
VEDIC AND EPIC LITERATURE
The title "Leader of the group" (Sanskrit: gaṇapati) occurs twice in the Rig Veda, but in neither case does it refer to the modern Ganesha. The term appears in RV 2.23.1 as a title for Brahmanaspati, according to commentators. While this verse doubtless refers to Brahmanaspati, it was later adopted for worship of Ganesha and is still used today. In rejecting any claim that this passage is evidence of Ganesha in the Rig Veda, Ludo Rocher says that it "clearly refers to Bṛhaspati—who is the deity of the hymn—and Bṛhaspati only". Equally clearly, the second passage (RV 10.112.9) refers to Indra, who is given the epithet 'gaṇapati', translated "Lord of the companies (of the Maruts)." However, Rocher notes that the more recent Ganapatya literature often quotes the Rigvedic verses to give Vedic respectability to Ganesha .
Two verses in texts belonging to Black Yajurveda, Maitrāyaṇīya Saṃhitā (2.9.1) and Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (10.1), appeal to a deity as "the tusked one" (Dantiḥ), "elephant-faced" (Hastimukha), and "with a curved trunk" (Vakratuņḍa). These names are suggestive of Ganesha, and the 14th century commentator Sayana explicitly establishes this identification. The description of Dantin, possessing a twisted trunk (vakratuṇḍa) and holding a corn-sheaf, a sugar cane, and a club, is so characteristic of the Puranic Ganapati that Heras says "we cannot resist to accept his full identification with this Vedic Dantin". However, Krishan considers these hymns to be post-Vedic additions. Thapan reports that these passages are "generally considered to have been interpolated". Dhavalikar says, "the references to the elephant-headed deity in the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā have been proven to be very late interpolations, and thus are not very helpful for determining the early formation of the deity".
Ganesha does not appear in Indian epic literature that is dated to the Vedic period. A late interpolation to the epic poem Mahabharata says that the sage Vyasa (Vyāsa) asked Ganesha to serve as his scribe to transcribe the poem as he dictated it to him. Ganesha agreed but only on condition that Vyasa recite the poem uninterrupted, that is, without pausing. The sage agreed, but found that to get any rest he needed to recite very complex passages so Ganesha would have to ask for clarifications. The story is not accepted as part of the original text by the editors of the critical edition of the Mahabharata, in which the twenty-line story is relegated to a footnote in an appendix. The story of Ganesha acting as the scribe occurs in 37 of the 59 manuscripts consulted during preparation of the critical edition. Ganesha's association with mental agility and learning is one reason he is shown as scribe for Vyāsa's dictation of the Mahabharata in this interpolation. Richard L. Brown dates the story to the 8th century, and Moriz Winternitz concludes that it was known as early as c. 900, but it was not added to the Mahabharata some 150 years later. Winternitz also notes that a distinctive feature in South Indian manuscripts of the Mahabharata is their omission of this Ganesha legend. The term vināyaka is found in some recensions of the Śāntiparva and Anuśāsanaparva that are regarded as interpolations. A reference to Vighnakartṛīṇām ("Creator of Obstacles") in Vanaparva is also believed to be an interpolation and does not appear in the critical edition.
PURANIC PERIOD
Stories about Ganesha often occur in the Puranic corpus. Brown notes while the Puranas "defy precise chronological ordering", the more detailed narratives of Ganesha's life are in the late texts, c. 600–1300. Yuvraj Krishan says that the Puranic myths about the birth of Ganesha and how he acquired an elephant's head are in the later Puranas, which were composed from c. 600 onwards. He elaborates on the matter to say that references to Ganesha in the earlier Puranas, such as the Vayu and Brahmanda Puranas, are later interpolations made during the 7th to 10th centuries.
In his survey of Ganesha's rise to prominence in Sanskrit literature, Ludo Rocher notes that:
Above all, one cannot help being struck by the fact that the numerous stories surrounding Gaṇeśa concentrate on an unexpectedly limited number of incidents. These incidents are mainly three: his birth and parenthood, his elephant head, and his single tusk. Other incidents are touched on in the texts, but to a far lesser extent.
Ganesha's rise to prominence was codified in the 9th century, when he was formally included as one of the five primary deities of Smartism. The 9th-century philosopher Adi Shankara popularized the "worship of the five forms" (Panchayatana puja) system among orthodox Brahmins of the Smarta tradition. This worship practice invokes the five deities Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, and Surya. Adi Shankara instituted the tradition primarily to unite the principal deities of these five major sects on an equal status. This formalized the role of Ganesha as a complementary deity.
SCRIPTURES
Once Ganesha was accepted as one of the five principal deities of Brahmanism, some Brahmins (brāhmaṇas) chose to worship Ganesha as their principal deity. They developed the Ganapatya tradition, as seen in the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana.
The date of composition for the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana - and their dating relative to one another - has sparked academic debate. Both works were developed over time and contain age-layered strata. Anita Thapan reviews comments about dating and provides her own judgement. "It seems likely that the core of the Ganesha Purana appeared around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries", she says, "but was later interpolated." Lawrence W. Preston considers the most reasonable date for the Ganesha Purana to be between 1100 and 1400, which coincides with the apparent age of the sacred sites mentioned by the text.
R.C. Hazra suggests that the Mudgala Purana is older than the Ganesha Purana, which he dates between 1100 and 1400. However, Phyllis Granoff finds problems with this relative dating and concludes that the Mudgala Purana was the last of the philosophical texts concerned with Ganesha. She bases her reasoning on the fact that, among other internal evidence, the Mudgala Purana specifically mentions the Ganesha Purana as one of the four Puranas (the Brahma, the Brahmanda, the Ganesha, and the Mudgala Puranas) which deal at length with Ganesha. While the kernel of the text must be old, it was interpolated until the 17th and 18th centuries as the worship of Ganapati became more important in certain regions. Another highly regarded scripture, the Ganapati Atharvashirsa, was probably composed during the 16th or 17th centuries.
BEYOND INDIA AND HINDUISM
Commercial and cultural contacts extended India's influence in western and southeast Asia. Ganesha is one of a number of Hindu deities who reached foreign lands as a result.
Ganesha was particularly worshipped by traders and merchants, who went out of India for commercial ventures. From approximately the 10th century onwards, new networks of exchange developed including the formation of trade guilds and a resurgence of money circulation. During this time, Ganesha became the principal deity associated with traders. The earliest inscription invoking Ganesha before any other deity is associated with the merchant community.
Hindus migrated to Maritime Southeast Asia and took their culture, including Ganesha, with them. Statues of Ganesha are found throughout the region, often beside Shiva sanctuaries. The forms of Ganesha found in Hindu art of Java, Bali, and Borneo show specific regional influences. The spread of Hindu culture to southeast Asia established Ganesha in modified forms in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. In Indochina, Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced side by side, and mutual influences can be seen in the iconography of Ganesha in the region. In Thailand, Cambodia, and among the Hindu classes of the Chams in Vietnam, Ganesha was mainly thought of as a remover of obstacles. Today in Buddhist Thailand, Ganesha is regarded as a remover of obstacles, the god of success.
Before the arrival of Islam, Afghanistan had close cultural ties with India, and the adoration of both Hindu and Buddhist deities was practiced. Examples of sculptures from the 5th to the 7th centuries have survived, suggesting that the worship of Ganesha was then in vogue in the region.
Ganesha appears in Mahayana Buddhism, not only in the form of the Buddhist god Vināyaka, but also as a Hindu demon form with the same name. His image appears in Buddhist sculptures during the late Gupta period. As the Buddhist god Vināyaka, he is often shown dancing. This form, called Nṛtta Ganapati, was popular in northern India, later adopted in Nepal, and then in Tibet. In Nepal, the Hindu form of Ganesha, known as Heramba, is popular; he has five heads and rides a lion. Tibetan representations of Ganesha show ambivalent views of him. A Tibetan rendering of Ganapati is tshogs bdag. In one Tibetan form, he is shown being trodden under foot by Mahākāla, (Shiva) a popular Tibetan deity. Other depictions show him as the Destroyer of Obstacles, and sometimes dancing. Ganesha appears in China and Japan in forms that show distinct regional character. In northern China, the earliest known stone statue of Ganesha carries an inscription dated to 531. In Japan, where Ganesha is known as Kangiten, the Ganesha cult was first mentioned in 806.
The canonical literature of Jainism does not mention the worship of Ganesha. However, Ganesha is worshipped by most Jains, for whom he appears to have taken over certain functions of Kubera. Jain connections with the trading community support the idea that Jainism took up Ganesha worship as a result of commercial connections. The earliest known Jain Ganesha statue dates to about the 9th century. A 15th-century Jain text lists procedures for the installation of Ganapati images. Images of Ganesha appear in the Jain temples of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
WIKIPEDIA
Title: More Exploits Of Spycatcher.
Author: Lt. Col. Oreste Pinto.
Publisher: Panther Books.
Date: 1961.
Artist: John Berry.
Police and partner agencies have been focusing on young people who run away or go missing from home and those that may exploit them during a week of action that began across Greater Manchester on Monday 14 March.
The focus of the campaign during this year’s week of action has been raising awareness around the strong link between child sexual exploitation and children who go missing.
Going missing can mean bunking off school, staying out overnight, or running away from home for a few days or longer. Whatever the context, the reality is that 95% children at risk from child sexual exploitation have gone missing at least once.
GMP Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said: “The statistics speak for themselves – there is a clear correlation between young people at risk of child sexual exploitation and their inclination to run away or go missing.
“More often than not, the young people who do run away do so regularly. This not only places a significant strain on policing but also increases the chances of that person coming to harm.
“Young people are often unaware of the dangers that are posed when they stay away from home without telling anyone and we urge them to keep in touch somehow, whether that’s through a friend, relative or anyone you trust.
“If you have concerns about your child’s whereabouts or don’t know where they are, please contact the police. With our partners in Project Phoenix we are doing all we can to work with these young people to get to the root of the problem, and keep them safe.
“Child sexual exploitation is a horrific crime and we will continue to work hard to both locate and protect those vulnerable to abuse, working with missing children on their return to break the cycle. Officers are patrolling around the clock, and will take robust action to tackle anyone who seeks to exploit these young people.”
Greater Manchester Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd said: “Greater Manchester is leading the fight against child sexual exploitation. We’re engaging with local people to raise awareness of the abuse and how to spot the signs, and partner agencies are working together to tackle the issue, bring perpetrators to justice, and provide much-needed support to victims and those at risk, including children who run away or go missing.
“Child sexual exploitation is child sex abuse, plain and simple. We must come down heavily on those who exploit and manipulate vulnerable children for their own sexual pleasure, and arm our young people with the means to keep safe and recognise unhealthy, abusive relationships.”
Paul Maher, Greater Manchester Area Manager at The Children’s Society, which works with children and young people who go missing or are at risk of going missing, said: “Children and young people who go missing are among the most vulnerable children in our society.
“Some may be running from neglect and abuse, family breakdown or drug and alcohol misuse by their parents - while others go missing under the influence of predatory adults seeking to exploit them.
“Whatever the reason for them going missing, we know these children are at particular risk of being sexually exploited or falling victim to other types of harm. Our research has shown that around a quarter are either hurt or harmed in some way.
“That is why it is vital they receive more support at an early stage to help address the issues that cause them to go missing and protect them from the risks of sexual exploitation or becoming a victim of other crimes.”
The week of activity is the latest from Project Phoenix’s ‘It’s Not Okay’ campaign, and will be publicising resources and support related to child sexual exploitation.
‘It’s Not Okay’ was created as part of Project Phoenix, the Greater Manchester response to tackling child sexual exploitation - a collaboration of public and third sector partners throughout Greater Manchester working together to protect young people.
Since the campaign launched in September 2014, public awareness and understanding of child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester has increased considerably amongst young people and parents and carers, as well as professionals.
In the 18 months since the launch of the ‘It’s Not Okay’ campaign, Project Phoenix has undertaken substantial work with schools, healthcare providers and support services to ensure that vulnerable young people are helped at every stage - from prevention through to support and rehabilitation.
Regular weeks of awareness-raising have included direct engagement with young people and those who care for them; police targeting and disruption, dedicated days of publicity focusing on key trends and close collaboration across Greater Manchester authorities means that hundreds more young people are being identified, educated and safeguarded than ever before. Visit www.itsnotokay.co.uk to find out more.
For more information about Policing in Greater Manchester please visit our website. www.gmp.police.uk
To report crime call police on 101 the national non-emergency number.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
Doel is a little village.
This village will be erase of the world with the extention of the Schelde river.
Some artists paint the houses to show on the world this uncredible fact.
Doel never die.
Doel est un petit village qui va être rasée de la carte du monde par l'extension de l'Escaut
Doel
Belgium location map.svg
Doel
Administration
Pays Belgique Belgique
Région Flandre Région flamande
Communauté Flandre Communauté flamande
Province Drapeau de la province de Flandre-Occidentale Province de Flandre-Orientale
Arrondissement Saint-Nicolas
Commune Beveren
Géographie
Coordonnées 51°18′″N 04°15′″E / Erreur d’expression : opérateur / inattendu, Erreur d’expression : opérateur / inattendu
Superficie 25,61 km²
Population 359 hab. (31/12/2007)
Densité 14 hab./km²
Autres informations
Gentilé
Code postal 9130
Zone téléphonique 03
Localisation de Doel au sein de Beveren
Localisation de Doel au sein de Beveren
modifier Consultez la documentation du modèle
Doel (appelé Den Doel dans le parler local) est un village situé dans l’extrême nord-est de la province belge de Flandre-Orientale, dans les marais du pays de Waas, sur la rive gauche de l’Escaut, large en cet endroit de quelque 1500 mètres par marée haute, en face de Lillo-Fort. Aujourd’hui intégré dans l’entité de Beveren, Doel était jusqu’en 1977 une commune autonome, d’une superficie de 25,61 km², et d’une population de quelque 1300 habitants (1972). Outre le village lui-même, l’ancienne commune de Doel comprend les hameaux de Rapenburg, Saftinge et Ouden Doel, et bien sûr, une vaste étendue de marais asséchés.
Depuis quelques décennies, le village se retrouve régulièrement projeté au centre de l’actualité belge, à double titre.
D’abord, il a été choisi, comme le village de Tihange dans la province de Liège, comme lieu d’implantation d’une des deux centrales nucléaires que compte la Belgique.
Ensuite, et plus récemment, il semble bien établi à présent que Doel doive s’ajouter à la liste des villages poldériens (si l’on nous permet ce néologisme) sacrifiés à l’expansion du port d’Anvers. En effet, l’évacuation totale de la bourgade, après expropriation de ses habitants, a été décidée en 1999 par l’autorité régionale flamande, pour faire place à de nouvelles installations portuaires. En dépit des résistances, et de la bataille juridique engagée par le comité d’action Doel 2020 (saisines du Conseil d’État, etc.), le sort de Doel paraît aujourd’hui scellé, et il faut craindre que les recours n’aient d’autre effet que d’en prolonger l’agonie. L’évacuation suit son cours, et à la date du 31 décembre 2006, Doel ne comptait déjà plus que 388 habitants.
Le nom de Doel (la combinaison oe se prononce comme un ou bref, API: /dul/) est attesté pour la première fois en 1267, sous la forme « De Doolen ». La signification précise demeure obscure; le terme pourrait être une référence à «dalen», vallées, au sens d’amas de sable creusés. Au Moyen Âge, les Doolen ont pu être des îlots au milieu de l’Escaut. Pour d’autres, Doel signifierait ‘digue, remblai, levée’. ‘Doel’ devint, après la domination française, la dénomination officielle.
La zone autour de Doel était à l’origine constituée de terres marécageuses et faisait partie d’une vaste étendue tourbeuse s’étirant d’est en ouest sur toute la Flandre zélandaise et le nord de la Flandre-Orientale. Au nord de Doel plus spécialement, dans ce qui est aujourd’hui le Verdronken Land van Saeftinghe, la couche de tourbe était particulièrement épaisse. À partir du XIIIe siècle, l’on procéda dans cette zone, qui au XIIIe siècle avait deux fois plus d’habitants que Doel, et qui hébergeait une abbaye cistercienne, à une exploitation intensive de la tourbe. Cette activité, fort lucrative, a induit une certaine prospérité dans la région.
L’extraction de tourbe dans la zone marécageuse eut pour effet d’abaisser le niveau du sol en de nombreux endroits et de rendre la zone vulnérable aux inondations. Dans le même temps, à partir du XIIe siècle, l’Escaut subissait de plus en plus l’emprise de la mer du Nord. Pour ces raisons, il advenait régulièrement à partir du XIVe siècle que Doel et les parties nord du Pays de Beveren fussent totalement inondées, déterminant la nécessité d’édifier des digues et d’aménager ainsi des polders.
Cependant, tout ce système, conjuguant poldérisation et extraction de tourbe, progressivement mis en place dans la région au cours du Moyen Âge, fut peu à peu anéanti, d’abord par une série d’inondations catastrophiques au XVIe siècle (dont la plus grave, en l’an 1570, connue sous le nom de Allerheiligenvloed, «marée de Toussaint», submergea entièrement, et à titre définitif, le marais de Saeftinghe), ensuite par les submersions, cette fois délibérément provoquées pour motifs stratégiques, durant la guerre de Quatre-Vingts Ans, notamment lors du siège d’Anvers par Alexandre Farnèse. La région était en effet alors le théâtre de combats dont l’enjeu était la maîtrise d’Anvers et de l’estuaire de l’Escaut. À cette même époque, elle fut pillée par deux fois, par des gueux (protestants) de Malines et par la soldatesque catholique royale. Les submersions volontaires ne purent empêcher Farnèse de prendre Anvers en 1585, mais les forces des États-généraux ayant réussi à s’emparer du fort de Liefkenshoek, sis au sud de Doel (et existant encore aujourd’hui), le village et le marais de Doel furent à partir de 1585 sous domination des États-généraux.
Le Hooghuis (1614).
Hooghuis : portique.
Lorsqu’arriva l’intermède de paix correspondant à la Trève de douze ans (1609-1621), la région entière n’était qu’une zone de désolation où marées et inondations de l’Escaut avaient libre carrière; tout était à refaire. Doel servait de point d’appui dans les opérations de guerre, et à la hauteur de l’actuel moulin se trouvait un fort abritant une garnison hollandaise. En 1614 fut accordée, par les États-Généraux de la République des Provinces-Unies, l’autorisation d’endiguer et d’assécher toute l’étendue autour de Doel. Cette décision signe l’acte de naissance de la bourgade de Doel sous sa forme actuelle, car, outre l’aménagement du marais, fut aussi commencé la construction, planifiée sur carte, du village. La disposition en damier des rues détermina une urbanisation géométrique, fort rare en ces latitudes. Les parcelles carrées ainsi formées furent ensuite bâties systématiquement, de telle façon qu’aucun jardin ne fût visible depuis la rue; ces jardins étaient (et sont encore) accessibles par d’étroits corridors aménagés entre les maisons et clos par des portillons, qu’autrefois on verrouillait pour la nuit.
Doel et le marais de Doel ont longtemps formé, de fait, une façon d’île, délimitée par l’Escaut d’une part, par des criques et des vasières d’autre part. Le marais de Doel s’étendait sur 1090 ha. La digue nord du marais de Doel, digue subsistant encore aujourd’hui, est la limite qui sépare le marais initial d’avec les marais aménagés ultérieurement, et permet de situer en partie les contours de cette ancienne île. Jusqu’au XVIIe siècle, Doel n’était en pratique guère accessible autrement qu’en bateau. Quant au marais de Saeftinghe, on renonça à l’endiguer, ce marais demeurant ainsi un verdronken land, une zone inondable au gré des marées; à l’heure actuelle, c’est une réserve ornithologique.
Au plan ecclésiastique, Doel dépendait de la paroisse de Kieldrecht et ne devint une paroisse autonome qu’en 1792. Cette même année, Doel fut attribué à l’empereur d’Autriche et vint à faire partie définitivement des Pays-Bas du Sud.
Lors des événements qui entourèrent l’indépendance belge en 1830, Doel subit le contrecoup de la bataille d’Anvers. En décembre 1832, les Belges, aidés de troupes françaises, réussirent à contraindre les Hollandais à céder Anvers, mais, après avoir investi le polder de Doel, ne purent cependant déloger les troupes hollandaises des forts de Liefkenshoek et de Lillo. Une garnison hollandaise continua donc d’occuper le fort de Liefkenshoek, et cela jusqu’à la signature d’un traité en 1839. Doel devint ensuite une commune autonome.
À partir de 1843 et jusqu’en 1945, Doel fut le siège du service de quarantaine chargé de contrôler les navires se rendant à Anvers. Le marais s’agrandit du polder Prosper (Prosperpolder, 1051 ha de terres arables), et, quelques décennies plus tard, du polder Hedwige (300 ha). À la fin du XIXe siècle, les deux tiers environ de la population doeloise vivaient de l’agriculture, et un tiers avait la pêche pour moyen de subsistance ; d’autre part, une sucrerie occupait une quarantaine de travailleurs.
Doel fut libérée en 1944 par des soldats britanniques et polonais. Le village eut cependant encore à souffrir des meurtrières bombes volantes V1, dont 68 tombèrent sur son territoire — 59 V1 et 9 V2 —, faisant 13 morts et détruisant totalement ou partiellement 35 maisons.
En 1975, Doel fusionna avec quelques communes environnantes pour constituer l’entité de Beveren.
Dans la bourgade, les rues sont disposées en damier, phénomène à peu près unique en Belgique : le plan se compose de trois rues parallèles à la digue, et de quatre autres rues qui les croisent à la perpendiculaire. Cette disposition remonte à la décision, prise au début du XVIIe siècle après les inondations stratégiques, de procéder à une poldérisation et un remembrement des terres autour de Doel, et est demeurée inchangée depuis.
* L’agglomération comprend plusieurs fermes et maisons bourgeoises. L’immeuble le plus ancien est le Hooghuis (litt. maison haute, classé monument historique), achevé de bâtir en 1614, dans le style renaissance flamand, avec monumental encadrement de porte en style baroque. L’intérieur n’est pas sans intérêt, avec ses plafonds en chêne et deux monumentales cheminées baroques du XVIIe siècle. L’édifice était au XVIIe siècle le siège de l’administration du polder, mais a aussi été le manoir appartenant à de riches bourgeois anversois; le Hooghuis est ainsi associé au nom de Rubens, cette demeure ayant été probablement la propriété de Jan Brandt, père d’Isabelle Brandt, la première épouse du peintre, et, ultérieurement, de Jan Van Broeckhoven de Bergeyck, qu’Hélène Fourment épousa en secondes noces, après le décès de Rubens.
* Le moulin, classé monument historique depuis 1946, est encastré dans la digue de l’Escaut. Il date du milieu du XVIIe siècle et figure parmi les plus anciens moulins en brique que compte la Flandre. Hors d’usage depuis 1927, le moulin est aujourd’hui aménagé en café-restaurant.
* L’église paroissiale, dédiée à Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, fut édifiée en style néoclassique entre 1851 et 1854 selon les plans de Lodewijk Roelandt, architecte municipal de Gand. Le mobilier cependant comprend des œuvres d’art plus anciennes, telles que des statues du sculpteur anversois H. F. Verbruggen (XVIIe siècle) et de E. A. Nijs (XVIIIe siècle). L’orgue est classé monument depuis 1980. L’église, endommagée suite à affaissements, fut entièrement restaurée entre 1996 et 1998. Les couches solides du sous-sol se situent à Doel à environ 11 mètres de profondeur, alors que les palées destinées à soutenir l’édifice ne s’enfoncent en terre que de 7 mètres. Cela explique pourquoi l’église penche assez fortement aujourd'hui, son clocher en particulier.
* Au nord du village, au-delà de la centrale nucléaire, à la hauteur du hameau Ouden Doel, se situent le long de l’Escaut les dernières vasières saumâtres que compte la Belgique. Ces vasières abritent le petit port de Prosperpolder et la réserve naturelle Schor Ouden Doel (51 ha).
* Doel possède un port de plaisance, constitué d’un unique bassin à marée, et un embarcadère où vient accoster le bac de Lillo-Fort, lequel effectue la traversée de l’Escaut tous les week-ends de mars à septembre.
* Doel attire de nombreux excursionnistes, en particulier pendant la période estivale. Un événement singulier est la Scheldewijding (bénédiction rituelle de l’Escaut), qui a lieu début août chaque année depuis 1975. Les festivités commencent par une messe célébrée en plein air. Ensuite, le collège des échevins (=adjoints au maire) se rend conjointement avec les conseillers communaux à un bateau amarré, en vue de la mise à l’eau d’une couronne de fleurs en commémoration des victimes de la mer et du fleuve. L’après-midi, après un spectacle naval sur l’Escaut, un cortège folklorique se met en branle, réunissant, en provenance des villages environnants, nombre de groupes et d’associations avec leurs géants et leurs sociétés musicales. Une marche aux flambeaux clôture la journée.
* En l’an 2000, une cogue (type de navire de commerce hauturier, naviguant au Moyen Âge entre les différents ports de la ligue hanséatique, en mer du Nord et en mer Baltique) a été mise au jour lors des travaux de terrassement en vue de la construction du bassin Deurganckdok. L’épave trouvée à Doel était enfouie à une profondeur entre -7 et -5m sous le niveau de la mer, dans un ancien bras ensablé de l’Escaut, connu sous le nom de Deurganck (= passage, cf. allem. Durchgang), qui autrefois communiquait directement avec le fleuve ; pour des raisons inconnues, la cogue vint échouer dans ce bras en 1404. La cogue de Doel (ainsi qu’il est désormais convenu de l’appeler) mesure environ 21m de long et 7m de large; sa hauteur conservée est de 2,5m environ. L’analyse dendrochronologique a permis d’établir que le chêne qui a fourni le bois du vaisseau a été abattu en Westphalie pendant l’hiver 1325-1326, ce qui fait de cette cogue une des plus grandes, des mieux préservées et des plus anciennes d’Europe. Une fois terminés les travaux de remise en état, la cogue sera (probablement) exposée dans le musée de la navigation de Baasrode, non loin de la ville de Termonde ; mais une maquette est d'ores et déjà visible au bezoekerscentrum (sorte d'écomusée), ouvert depuis septembre 2007 au fort de Liefkenshoek. Une deuxième cogue découverte au même endroit, mais moins bien conservée, date de 1328.
Les premiers projets d’expansion du port d’Anvers sur la rive gauche de l’Escaut datent de 1963 et prévoyaient que l’ensemble des polders du pays de Waas ainsi que Doel disparussent pour faire place à des bassins et à des terrains industriels. En 1968, une interdiction de construire entra en vigueur dans le village. Suite à la récession économique des années 70, ces plans d’expansion furent revus à la baisse, et l’on vit apparaître sur le plan de secteur (=plan d’occupation du sol) de 1978 la ligne dite De Bondtlijn (d’après le sénateur Ferdinand De Bondt), ligne qui allait d’est en ouest, et qui, passant tout juste au sud de Doel, limitait la zone d’extension portuaire à la partie sud des polders. L’interdiction de construire fut donc levée cette même année. Dans la première moitié des années 80 fut réalisé, au sud de Doel, le bassin Doeldok, lequel cependant n'a jamais été utilisé.
L’implantation industrielle moderne la plus ancienne à Doel fut la centrale nucléaire, à 1 km au nord du village, dont la construction fut entamée en 1969. Elle héberge quatre réacteurs (Doel I, mis en service en 1974, Doel II en 1975, Doel III en 1982, et Doel IV en 1985), ainsi que deux tours de refroidissement d’environ 170 mètres de hauteur.
En 1995 furent rendus publics les projets d’extension de l’Administration des voies navigables et des affaires maritimes (Administratie Waterwegen en Zeewezen) de l’autorité flamande, lesquels projets prévoyaient l’aménagement, un peu au sud de Doel, d’un nouveau bassin pour conteneurs, dénommé Deurganckdok. Dans la perspective de la réalisation de ce bassin, l’on se mit à s’interroger sur la vivabilité de Doel, et dans les années qui suivirent une lutte acharnée s’engagea avec comme enjeu la survie du village. En 1997 fut constitué le comité d’action Doel 2020, et des personnalités connues en Flandre, telles que l’ancien sénateur Ferdinand De Bondt, le cinéaste Frank Van Passel, et les trois prêtres Luc Versteylen (fondateur du parti vert flamand Agalev), Phil Bosmans (écrivain) et Karel Van Isacker (historien) s’associèrent au mouvement de protestation. Une prise de décision opaque et des bévues juridiques donnèrent lieu à de grands retards dans la construction du Deurganckdok et entretinrent pendant de longues années un état d’incertitude quant à l’avenir de Doel. Les habitants étaient divisés en, d’une part, ceux qui souhaitaient y rester et, d’autre part, ceux qui au contraire avaient fait choix de lutter pour obtenir un règlement d’expropriation clair et équitable. Le 1er juin 1999, le gouvernement flamand décida, après une modification provisoire du plan de secteur intervenue en 1998, que Doel devait disparaître de ce plan de secteur au titre de zone de résidence, toujours au motif de l’invivabilité du village, qualificatif récusé par les opposants.
Après le changement de gouvernement de la région flamande en 1999, une étude fut effectuée, sur insistance du parti vert Agalev, concernant la vivabilité de Doel après l’achèvement du nouveau bassin Deurganckdok. Cette étude cependant ne remit pas en cause la modification du plan de secteur, ni la décision déjà prise de faire disparaître Doel à terme.
Le 30 juillet 2002, le Conseil d’État suspendit la mise à exécution du plan de secteur tel que modifié, c'est-à-dire comportant notamment la requalification de Doel comme zone industrielle. C’est donc le plan de secteur de 1978, qui classe Doel comme zone résidentielle, qui garde force de droit. Toutefois, en vertu du Décret d’urgence (Nooddecreet) ou Décret de validation, adopté le 14 décembre 2001 au parlement flamand, le gouvernement flamand est habilité à délivrer, en vue de la construction du Deurganckdok, des permis de bâtir et à les faire sanctionner par le parlement. L’on escomptait pouvoir par cette voie contourner le plan de secteur. Le Nooddecreet était la réaction du gouvernement flamand face à la suspension des travaux du Deurganckdok imposé par un arrêté du Conseil d’État ; des comités d’action avaient en effet mis au jour des vices de procédure entachant les modifications apportées au plan de secteur. Le Nooddecreet, compte tenu qu’il interférait dans les procédures en cours, et tendait à contourner partiellement la protection juridique des citoyens, est considéré par beaucoup comme contraire aux principes de l’État de droit.
En octobre 1999 fut néanmoins engagée la construction du Deurganckdok, lequel fut inauguré en juillet 2005. Dès le printemps 1999 étaient venus à être connus d’autres projets encore, prévoyant notamment un deuxième grand bassin à conteneurs, le controversé Saeftinghedok (cf. ci-dessous), qui serait creusé à l’emplacement même de la petite agglomération. La mise en œuvre de ces projets reste cependant incertaine. Une décision à ce sujet est attendue au plus tôt en 2007.
Un nouveau « plan stratégique », que la Région flamande et les autorités portuaires anversoises ont achevé de mettre au point en 2007, devrait être approuvé bientôt. Le plan prévoit de requalifier en zone portuaire toute la zone située au nord d’une ligne Kieldrecht-Kallo (et donc englobant Doel), jusqu’à la frontière néerlandaise. La construction d’un nouveau bassin à marée, le Saeftinghedok, serait alors possible, moyennant la poursuite des expropriations.
Partisans et détracteurs s’opposent à propos de l’opportunité de ce bassin. Celui-ci a un fervent défenseur en la personne de Marc Van Peel, depuis fin 2006 échevin (=adjoint au maire) aux affaires portuaires de la municipalité d’Anvers. Selon M. Van Peel, l’extension du port d’Anvers est une nécessité, compte tenu, d’une part, de la croissance prévisible du trafic de conteneurs, lequel est passé, en 2007, de 7 à 8 millions d’ÉVP, et d’autre part, de ce que le port d’Anvers sera apte, dès 2008, grâce aux travaux d’approfondissement de l’estuaire qui ont été réalisés, à accueillir des porte-conteneurs d’une capacité jusqu’à 12.500 ÉVP. Si cette croissance se poursuit à ce même rythme, on peut prévoir que le Deurganckdok sera parvenu à saturation aux alentours de 2012. Or, les seules possibilités d’expansion se trouvent sur la rive gauche, dans les marais de Doel.
Les opposants au projet vont valoir, étude récente de la Ocean Shipping Consultants à l’appui, que la conteneurisation des marchandises pourrait atteindre bientôt son plafond, et que la croissance prévisible du trafic pourrait être moindre dans les dix années à venir que dans les années récentes. Par ailleurs, à l’heure actuelle, le Deurganckdok est loin d’avoir épuisé toute sa capacité, et il apparaît de surcroît que le rendement, exprimé en ÉVP par hectare, se situe, au port d’Anvers, avec un chiffre de 18.000 seulement, très en deçà de ce qu’il est à Rotterdam ou à Hambourg, où l’on atteint les 30.000 ÉVP par hectare. Dès lors, au lieu d’un supposé manque de capacité, ce serait plutôt d’une grande réserve de capacité (resp. d'une surcapacité, si le Saeftinghedok devait être construit) qu’il pourrait être question, de sorte que moyennant certaines améliorations techniques, et éventuellement un allongement du Deurganckdok, il devrait être possible de faire face à l’augmentation du trafic conteneurs, et ce, selon les calculs du parti écologiste Groen!, au moins jusqu'en 2027.
Dès 1999, les habitants qui le désiraient pouvaient se faire exproprier. Les maisons expropriées passaient aux mains de la Maatschappij voor Grond- en Industrialisatiebeleid van het Linkerscheldeoevergebied (Société de gestion foncière et d’industrialisation de la Rive gauche de l’Escaut, en abrégé Maatschappij Linkeroever), cependant les habitants expropriés bénéficiaient d’un droit d’habitation, garanti initialement jusqu’au 1er janvier 2007. Fin 2006, l’administration fit savoir aux habitants que le droit d’habitation serait prorogé de manière provisoire.
En même temps fut nommé en 1999 un médiateur social, chargé de mettre à exécution le plan d’accompagnement social et d’assister les habitants qui quittent le village volontairement. Le 31 décembre 2003, ce plan social vint à son terme. Cette manière de procéder a permis de rendre exsangue, en seulement quelques années et sans coup férir, une grande partie du village: le 1er mai 2003 ne vivaient plus dans le centre de Doel que 214 des 645 habitants qui étaient inscrits au 20 janvier 1998. Le chiffre de population réel dans le centre s’élevait toutefois, au 1er mai 2003, à 301. Le 1er septembre 2003, l’école communale fut fermée après constatation que seuls 8 élèves s’y étaient inscrits.
Depuis lors, si le nombre d’habitants officiel a poursuivi sa baisse (plus que 202 en mars 2006), le nombre réel s’est progressivement accru. Cela s’explique, pour petite partie, par l’arrivée de nouveaux locataires dans certaines maisons expropriées, et pour majeure partie par le fait que des squatteurs avaient occupé les immeubles vacants (les estimations se situent entre 150 et 200). Cet état de choses fut longtemps toléré par la Société propriétaire des maisons vacantes et par la municipalité de Beveren.
Début 2006, les médias se sont de nouveau intéressés à Doel en raison du grand nombre de squatteurs. Cela concourut à répandre dans le public l’idée que Doel s’était dans une certaine mesure muée en une zone de non-droit, où l’on pouvait sans problème s’approprier un logement vacant, ce qui, à son tour, eut pour effet d’attirer de nouveaux squatteurs et de provoquer une vague de cambriolages. Le 22 mars 2006, le bourgmestre (=maire) de Beveren annonça que les contrôles de police seraient intensifiés à Doel et que la tolérance zéro serait dorénavant en vigueur et toute activité illégale réprimée. Certains squatteurs cependant demandent à régulariser leur situation.
Début septembre 2007, le tribunal des référés de Termonde a interdit la démolition de logements à Doel. La Maatschappij Linkeroever avait demandé quarante permis de démolition, dont une vingtaine avaient été accordés entre-temps. Le gouvernement flamand souhaite que 125 immeubles au total — soit environ une moitié des maisons du village —, déjà acquis par l’autorité flamande, aient disparu d’ici fin 2007 ; cela du reste rejoint sa décision de mettre un terme final au droit d’habitation (woonrecht) en 2009 : toutes les maisons qui viendraient ainsi à se trouver vacantes seraient ensuite démolies. Cependant, quelques habitants de Doel, soutenus en cela par le comité d’action Doel 2020, avaient saisi le tribunal de Termonde afin d’empêcher les démolitions. Sur le plan d’occupation du sol, Doel reste classé en zone d’habitation, le nouveau plan de secteur qui requalifiait Doel en zone industrielle ayant en effet quelques années auparavant été suspendu par le Conseil d’État. Le président du tribunal a jugé que les travaux de démolition seraient dommageables aux habitants restés sur place et dépasseraient les limites de la simple incommodation.
Par ailleurs, et dans le même temps, une délégation des habitants de Doel s’est rendue au Parlement européen à Bruxelles pour protester contre la démolition programmée de 125 logements. La délégation a remis une requête à la Commission des pétitions du Parlement européen.
Source wikipédia
Three men and a woman have been sentenced after being rumbled by our detectives in Tameside investigating a drugs line that profited around £80k from the criminal exploitation of teenage boys.
Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard today (18 November 2021) how Ryan Wall, 24, Claire Daniels, 36, Christopher Thornton, 20, and Leigh Sleddon, 38, were involved in an organised crime group that trafficked class A drugs as well as vulnerable young people from Tameside to Blackpool.
Wall, of Lakenheath Road, Liverpool and Thornton, of Barlow Road, Dukinfield, were sentenced to a total of 17 years after admitting arranging or facilitating the travel of another person with a view to exploitation under the Modern Slavery Act - becoming GMP's first county lines offenders guilty of this offence.
Despite not being charged with the same offence, the court also accepted that Daniels - herself a mother - of Fitzroy Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, was aware and complicit in the movement of the teenagers in order for them to deal drugs and she was given a one year and two month suspended sentence.
Sleddon, of Claremont Court, Blackpool, admitted that the children had stayed at his address in return for him being supplied with drugs. He was given a two year suspended sentence.
The verdicts conclude an eighteen-month investigation into the transportation of drugs and children - aged between 13 and 16 - led by detectives in GMP Tameside's Complex Safeguarding Team.
Investigators began the operation - codenamed 'Fairview' - following the report of a boy missing from the Hyde area. After close work with Lancashire Police, it was identified that he had been moved to Blackpool and that he was being used by the gang to supply class 'A' drugs on the streets.
Enquiries confirmed that two other teenage boys who had been missing from the nearby Ashton area had been in contact with a number associated with Ryan Wall - who was jailed for nine years today.
Already a picture was starting to develop of a group conspiring to supply class A drugs - namely heroin and crack cocaine - and also transporting the young boys to Blackpool to deal these drugs on the streets, often leaving them to fend for themselves for days.
While it is not thought the two boys - and a third boy also found to be exploited - were ever injured, detectives believe by leaving the boys alone to be involved in illicit enterprises in towns miles away from home was exposing them to a real and significant danger.
Officers ensured the boys were immediately referred to relevant specialist agencies and safeguarded away from further harm, and have pursued with a victimless prosecution to ensure that the gang are still held to account for their crimes.
A strike day was executed at the start of October 2020 where eight people - aged 16 to 67 - were arrested, before Wall, Thornton and Daniels were charged and eventually admitted two counts of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug. The detectives were also able to prove to the court that Thornton, who was jailed for eight years today, was also controlling a 'drug line' local to the Tameside area supplying heroin, cocaine and cannabis. He had also entered guilty pleas for these matters.
Wall and Thornton pleaded guilty of four modern slavery offences between them while Sleddon pleaded guilty to participating in the activities of an organised crime group.
While similar charges have been secured in other complex safeguarding teams in Greater Manchester for offences relating to Child Sexual Exploitation, the unit in Tameside is the first to land a conviction under the Modern Slavery Act in relation to Child Criminal Exploitation 'county lines' gangs - with support from the Crown Prosecution Service.
Comprising of specially-trained detectives, safeguarding officers, and partners from Tameside Council; the Complex Safeguarding Team currently has nine ongoing investigations and a number of suspects have been arrested. Children who have been identified as needing to be safeguarded have in some cases been re-homed.
Detective Constable Matthew Elliot, from Operation Fairview, said: "Today, this group has been jailed for their roles in a county line gang - wrecking lives along the way through the dissemination of illegal drugs.
"But what we've been able to prove to the court during this investigation, is that Wall and Thornton - in particular - were not just trafficking drugs but also trafficking people.
"They were running their drugs line to Blackpool by deliberately targeting teenage boys, and exploiting them for their own illicit gains.
"These were boys who were identified by the group as vulnerable, and groomed into travelling between counties - left to fend for themselves and exposed to danger - to do the dirty work on the ground that these offenders didn’t wish to do themselves.
"The act of exploiting children and peddling them for such selfish and criminal ways is an abhorrent crime - but one that is complex and wide-ranging which makes today's outcome all the more of a success.
"And it isn’t just putting offenders behind bars that makes this operation a great result. The fact we have been able to work with partners and ensure victims have been safeguarded and away from harm is just as - if not more - significant.
"I would like to thank our partners at Tameside Council, Lancashire Police, and the Crown Prosecution Service, for the extensive support they have offered to this investigation and helping us ensure these historic convictions for GMP.
"This has been a tireless eighteen-month investigation by our Complex Safeguarding Team in Tameside, and hopefully the first good result of many.
"We have demonstrated how by working with local police forces, local authority, and other relevant supporting agencies, that we are able to target and dismantle those involved in this truly despicable criminal activity - while identifying and protecting victims in the process.
"If you feel you are being criminally exploited, or know someone who is, then please come forward to the police or Crimestoppers, knowing information will be treat with the strictest confidence."
Tameside Council Executive Member for Children and Families, Councillor Bill Fairfoull, said: “Superb partnership working has resulted in this first conviction of Modern Day Slavery in Greater Manchester. We have removed these drug dealers from our streets and stopped them from exploiting our children. Our Children’s Services staff have worked tirelessly with the police to secure this result and I’d like to thank everyone involved for their hard work.
“All of the children involved are being supported by our Tameside Complex Safeguarding Team and Tameside Youth Justice Service. I’m also pleased that the learning from this successful operation with be shared across Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Teams as a model of best practice.”
Police and partner agencies have been focusing on young people who run away or go missing from home and those that may exploit them during a week of action that began across Greater Manchester on Monday 14 March.
The focus of the campaign during this year’s week of action has been raising awareness around the strong link between child sexual exploitation and children who go missing.
Going missing can mean bunking off school, staying out overnight, or running away from home for a few days or longer. Whatever the context, the reality is that 95% children at risk from child sexual exploitation have gone missing at least once.
GMP Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said: “The statistics speak for themselves – there is a clear correlation between young people at risk of child sexual exploitation and their inclination to run away or go missing.
“More often than not, the young people who do run away do so regularly. This not only places a significant strain on policing but also increases the chances of that person coming to harm.
“Young people are often unaware of the dangers that are posed when they stay away from home without telling anyone and we urge them to keep in touch somehow, whether that’s through a friend, relative or anyone you trust.
“If you have concerns about your child’s whereabouts or don’t know where they are, please contact the police. With our partners in Project Phoenix we are doing all we can to work with these young people to get to the root of the problem, and keep them safe.
“Child sexual exploitation is a horrific crime and we will continue to work hard to both locate and protect those vulnerable to abuse, working with missing children on their return to break the cycle. Officers are patrolling around the clock, and will take robust action to tackle anyone who seeks to exploit these young people.”
Greater Manchester Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd said: “Greater Manchester is leading the fight against child sexual exploitation. We’re engaging with local people to raise awareness of the abuse and how to spot the signs, and partner agencies are working together to tackle the issue, bring perpetrators to justice, and provide much-needed support to victims and those at risk, including children who run away or go missing.
“Child sexual exploitation is child sex abuse, plain and simple. We must come down heavily on those who exploit and manipulate vulnerable children for their own sexual pleasure, and arm our young people with the means to keep safe and recognise unhealthy, abusive relationships.”
Paul Maher, Greater Manchester Area Manager at The Children’s Society, which works with children and young people who go missing or are at risk of going missing, said: “Children and young people who go missing are among the most vulnerable children in our society.
“Some may be running from neglect and abuse, family breakdown or drug and alcohol misuse by their parents - while others go missing under the influence of predatory adults seeking to exploit them.
“Whatever the reason for them going missing, we know these children are at particular risk of being sexually exploited or falling victim to other types of harm. Our research has shown that around a quarter are either hurt or harmed in some way.
“That is why it is vital they receive more support at an early stage to help address the issues that cause them to go missing and protect them from the risks of sexual exploitation or becoming a victim of other crimes.”
The week of activity is the latest from Project Phoenix’s ‘It’s Not Okay’ campaign, and will be publicising resources and support related to child sexual exploitation.
‘It’s Not Okay’ was created as part of Project Phoenix, the Greater Manchester response to tackling child sexual exploitation - a collaboration of public and third sector partners throughout Greater Manchester working together to protect young people.
Since the campaign launched in September 2014, public awareness and understanding of child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester has increased considerably amongst young people and parents and carers, as well as professionals.
In the 18 months since the launch of the ‘It’s Not Okay’ campaign, Project Phoenix has undertaken substantial work with schools, healthcare providers and support services to ensure that vulnerable young people are helped at every stage - from prevention through to support and rehabilitation.
Regular weeks of awareness-raising have included direct engagement with young people and those who care for them; police targeting and disruption, dedicated days of publicity focusing on key trends and close collaboration across Greater Manchester authorities means that hundreds more young people are being identified, educated and safeguarded than ever before. Visit www.itsnotokay.co.uk to find out more.
For more information about Policing in Greater Manchester please visit our website. www.gmp.police.uk
To report crime call police on 101 the national non-emergency number.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
The exploitation rights for this text are the property of the Vienna Tourist Board. This text may be reprinted free of charge until further notice, even partially and in edited form. Forward sample copy to: Vienna Tourist Board, Media Management, Invalidenstraße 6, 1030 Vienna; media.rel@wien.info. All information in this text without guarantee.
Author: Andreas Nierhaus, Curator of Architecture/Wien Museum
Last updated January 2014
Architecture in Vienna
Vienna's 2,000-year history is present in a unique density in the cityscape. The layout of the center dates back to the Roman city and medieval road network. Romanesque and Gothic churches characterize the streets and squares as well as palaces and mansions of the baroque city of residence. The ring road is an expression of the modern city of the 19th century, in the 20th century extensive housing developments set accents in the outer districts. Currently, large-scale urban development measures are implemented; distinctive buildings of international star architects complement the silhouette of the city.
Due to its function as residence of the emperor and European power center, Vienna for centuries stood in the focus of international attention, but it was well aware of that too. As a result, developed an outstanding building culture, and still today on a worldwide scale only a few cities can come up with a comparable density of high-quality architecture. For several years now, Vienna has increased its efforts to connect with its historical highlights and is drawing attention to itself with some spectacular new buildings. The fastest growing city in the German-speaking world today most of all in residential construction is setting standards. Constants of the Viennese architecture are respect for existing structures, the palpability of historical layers and the dialogue between old and new.
Culmination of medieval architecture: the Stephansdom
The oldest architectural landmark of the city is St. Stephen's Cathedral. Under the rule of the Habsburgs, defining the face of the city from the late 13th century until 1918 in a decisive way, the cathedral was upgraded into the sacral monument of the political ambitions of the ruling house. The 1433 completed, 137 meters high southern tower, by the Viennese people affectionately named "Steffl", is a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture in Europe. For decades he was the tallest stone structure in Europe, until today he is the undisputed center of the city.
The baroque residence
Vienna's ascension into the ranks of the great European capitals began in Baroque. Among the most important architects are Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Outside the city walls arose a chain of summer palaces, including the garden Palais Schwarzenberg (1697-1704) as well as the Upper and Lower Belvedere of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1714-22). Among the most important city palaces are the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene (1695-1724, now a branch of the Belvedere) and the Palais Daun-Kinsky (auction house in Kinsky 1713-19). The emperor himself the Hofburg had complemented by buildings such as the Imperial Library (1722-26) and the Winter Riding School (1729-34). More important, however, for the Habsburgs was the foundation of churches and monasteries. Thus arose before the city walls Fischer von Erlach's Karlskirche (1714-39), which with its formal and thematic complex show façade belongs to the major works of European Baroque. In colored interior rooms like that of St. Peter's Church (1701-22), the contemporary efforts for the synthesis of architecture, painting and sculpture becomes visible.
Upgrading into metropolis: the ring road time (Ringstraßenzeit)
Since the Baroque, reflections on extension of the hopelessly overcrowed city were made, but only Emperor Franz Joseph ordered in 1857 the demolition of the fortifications and the connection of the inner city with the suburbs. 1865, the Ring Road was opened. It is as the most important boulevard of Europe an architectural and in terms of urban development achievement of the highest rank. The original building structure is almost completely preserved and thus conveys the authentic image of a metropolis of the 19th century. The public representational buildings speak, reflecting accurately the historicism, by their style: The Greek Antique forms of Theophil Hansen's Parliament (1871-83) stood for democracy, the Renaissance of the by Heinrich Ferstel built University (1873-84) for the flourishing of humanism, the Gothic of the Town Hall (1872-83) by Friedrich Schmidt for the medieval civic pride.
Dominating remained the buildings of the imperial family: Eduard van der Nüll's and August Sicardsburg's Opera House (1863-69), Gottfried Semper's and Carl Hasenauer's Burgtheater (1874-88), their Museum of Art History and Museum of Natural History (1871-91) and the Neue (New) Hofburg (1881-1918 ). At the same time the ring road was the preferred residential area of mostly Jewish haute bourgeoisie. With luxurious palaces the families Ephrussi, Epstein or Todesco made it clear that they had taken over the cultural leadership role in Viennese society. In the framework of the World Exhibition of 1873, the new Vienna presented itself an international audience. At the ring road many hotels were opened, among them the Hotel Imperial and today's Palais Hansen Kempinski.
Laboratory of modernity: Vienna around 1900
Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank (1903-06) was one of the last buildings in the Ring road area Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank (1903-06), which with it façade, liberated of ornament, and only decorated with "functional" aluminum buttons and the glass banking hall now is one of the icons of modern architecture. Like no other stood Otto Wagner for the dawn into the 20th century: His Metropolitan Railway buildings made the public transport of the city a topic of architecture, the church of the Psychiatric hospital at Steinhofgründe (1904-07) is considered the first modern church.
With his consistent focus on the function of a building ("Something impractical can not be beautiful"), Wagner marked a whole generation of architects and made Vienna the laboratory of modernity: in addition to Joseph Maria Olbrich, the builder of the Secession (1897-98) and Josef Hoffmann, the architect of the at the western outskirts located Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1904) and founder of the Vienna Workshop (Wiener Werkstätte, 1903) is mainly to mention Adolf Loos, with the Loos House at the square Michaelerplatz (1909-11) making architectural history. The extravagant marble cladding of the business zone stands in maximal contrast, derived from the building function, to the unadorned facade above, whereby its "nudity" became even more obvious - a provocation, as well as his culture-critical texts ("Ornament and Crime"), with which he had greatest impact on the architecture of the 20th century. Public contracts Loos remained denied. His major works therefore include villas, apartment facilities and premises as the still in original state preserved Tailor salon Knize at Graben (1910-13) and the restored Loos Bar (1908-09) near the Kärntner Straße (passageway Kärntner Durchgang).
Between the Wars: International Modern Age and social housing
After the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, Vienna became capital of the newly formed small country of Austria. In the heart of the city, the architects Theiss & Jaksch built 1931-32 the first skyscraper in Vienna as an exclusive residential address (Herrengasse - alley 6-8). To combat the housing shortage for the general population, the social democratic city government in a globally unique building program within a few years 60,000 apartments in hundreds of apartment buildings throughout the city area had built, including the famous Karl Marx-Hof by Karl Ehn (1925-30). An alternative to the multi-storey buildings with the 1932 opened International Werkbundsiedlung was presented, which was attended by 31 architects from Austria, Germany, France, Holland and the USA and showed models for affordable housing in greenfield areas. With buildings of Adolf Loos, André Lurçat, Richard Neutra, Gerrit Rietveld, the Werkbundsiedlung, which currently is being restored at great expense, is one of the most important documents of modern architecture in Austria.
Modernism was also expressed in significant Villa buildings: The House Beer (1929-31) by Josef Frank exemplifies the refined Wiener living culture of the interwar period, while the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1926-28, today Bulgarian Cultural Institute), built by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein together with the architect Paul Engelmann for his sister Margarete, by its aesthetic radicalism and mathematical rigor represents a special case within contemporary architecture.
Expulsion, war and reconstruction
After the "Anschluss (Annexation)" to the German Reich in 1938, numerous Jewish builders, architects (female and male ones), who had been largely responsible for the high level of Viennese architecture, have been expelled from Austria. During the Nazi era, Vienna remained largely unaffected by structural transformations, apart from the six flak towers built for air defense of Friedrich Tamms (1942-45), made of solid reinforced concrete which today are present as memorials in the cityscape.
The years after the end of World War II were characterized by the reconstruction of the by bombs heavily damaged city. The architecture of those times was marked by aesthetic pragmatism, but also by the attempt to connect with the period before 1938 and pick up on current international trends. Among the most important buildings of the 1950s are Roland Rainer's City Hall (1952-58), the by Oswald Haerdtl erected Wien Museum at Karlsplatz (1954-59) and the 21er Haus of Karl Schwanzer (1958-62).
The youngsters come
Since the 1960s, a young generation was looking for alternatives to the moderate modernism of the reconstruction years. With visionary designs, conceptual, experimental and above all temporary architectures, interventions and installations, Raimund Abraham, Günther Domenig, Eilfried Huth, Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler and the groups Coop Himmelb(l)au, Haus-Rucker-Co and Missing Link rapidly got international attention. Although for the time being it was more designed than built, was the influence on the postmodern and deconstructivist trends of the 1970s and 1980s also outside Austria great. Hollein's futuristic "Retti" candle shop at Charcoal Market/Kohlmarkt (1964-65) and Domenig's biomorphic building of the Central Savings Bank in Favoriten (10th district of Vienna - 1975-79) are among the earliest examples, later Hollein's Haas-Haus (1985-90), the loft conversion Falkestraße (1987/88) by Coop Himmelb(l)au or Domenig's T Center (2002-04) were added. Especially Domenig, Hollein, Coop Himmelb(l)au and the architects Ortner & Ortner (ancient members of Haus-Rucker-Co) by orders from abroad the new Austrian and Viennese architecture made a fixed international concept.
MuseumQuarter and Gasometer
Since the 1980s, the focus of building in Vienna lies on the compaction of the historic urban fabric that now as urban habitat of high quality no longer is put in question. Among the internationally best known projects is the by Ortner & Ortner planned MuseumsQuartier in the former imperial stables (competition 1987, 1998-2001), which with institutions such as the MUMOK - Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig, the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Architecture Center Vienna and the Zoom Children's Museum on a wordwide scale is under the largest cultural complexes. After controversies in the planning phase, here an architectural compromise between old and new has been achieved at the end, whose success as an urban stage with four million visitors (2012) is overwhelming.
The dialogue between old and new, which has to stand on the agenda of building culture of a city that is so strongly influenced by history, also features the reconstruction of the Gasometer in Simmering by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Wilhelm Holzbauer, Jean Nouvel and Manfred Wehdorn (1999-2001). Here was not only created new housing, but also a historical industrial monument reinterpreted into a signal in the urban development area.
New Neighborhood
In recent years, the major railway stations and their surroundings moved into the focus of planning. Here not only necessary infrastructural measures were taken, but at the same time opened up spacious inner-city residential areas and business districts. Among the prestigious projects are included the construction of the new Vienna Central Station, started in 2010 with the surrounding office towers of the Quartier Belvedere and the residential and school buildings of the Midsummer quarter (Sonnwendviertel). Europe's largest wooden tower invites here for a spectacular view to the construction site and the entire city. On the site of the former North Station are currently being built 10,000 homes and 20,000 jobs, on that of the Aspangbahn station is being built at Europe's greatest Passive House settlement "Euro Gate", the area of the North Western Railway Station is expected to be developed from 2020 for living and working. The largest currently under construction residential project but can be found in the north-eastern outskirts, where in Seaside Town Aspern till 2028 living and working space for 40,000 people will be created.
In one of the "green lungs" of Vienna, the Prater, 2013, the WU campus was opened for the largest University of Economics of Europe. Around the central square spectacular buildings of an international architect team from Great Britain, Japan, Spain and Austria are gathered that seem to lead a sometimes very loud conversation about the status quo of contemporary architecture (Hitoshi Abe, BUSarchitektur, Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid, NO MAD Arquitectos, Carme Pinós).
Flying high
International is also the number of architects who have inscribed themselves in the last few years with high-rise buildings in the skyline of Vienna and make St. Stephen's a not always unproblematic competition. Visible from afar is Massimiliano Fuksas' 138 and 127 meters high elegant Twin Tower at Wienerberg (1999-2001). The monolithic, 75-meter-high tower of the Hotel Sofitel at the Danube Canal by Jean Nouvel (2007-10), on the other hand, reacts to the particular urban situation and stages in its top floor new perspectives to the historical center on the other side.
Also at the water stands Dominique Perrault's DC Tower (2010-13) in the Danube City - those high-rise city, in which since the start of construction in 1996, the expansion of the city north of the Danube is condensed symbolically. Even in this environment, the slim and at the same time striking vertically folded tower of Perrault is beyond all known dimensions; from its Sky Bar, from spring 2014 on you are able to enjoy the highest view of Vienna. With 250 meters, the tower is the tallest building of Austria and almost twice as high as the St. Stephen's Cathedral. Vienna, thus, has acquired a new architectural landmark which cannot be overlooked - whether it also has the potential to become a landmark of the new Vienna, only time will tell. The architectural history of Vienna, where European history is presence and new buildings enter into an exciting and not always conflict-free dialogue with a great and outstanding architectural heritage, in any case has yet to offer exciting chapters.
Info: The folder "Architecture: From Art Nouveau to the Presence" is available at the Vienna Tourist Board and can be downloaded on www.wien.info/media/files/guide-architecture-in-wien.pdf.
James Montgomery (4 November 1771 – 30 April 1854) was a Scottish-born hymn writer, poet and editor, who eventually settled in Sheffield. He was raised in the Moravian Church and theologically trained there, so that his writings often reflect concern for humanitarian causes, such as the abolition of slavery and the exploitation of child chimney sweeps.[1]
Early life and poetry
Montgomery was born at Irvine in south-west Scotland, the son of a pastor and missionary of the Moravian Brethren. He was sent to be trained for the ministry at the Moravian School at Fulneck, near Leeds, while his parents left for the West Indies, where both died within a year of each other. At Fulneck, secular studies were banned, but James still found means of borrowing and reading a good deal of poetry and made ambitious plans to write epics of his own.
On failing to complete his schooling, Montgomery was apprenticed to a baker in Mirfield, then to a store-keeper at Wath-upon-Dearne. After further efforts, including an unsuccessful attempt at a literary career in London, he moved north again to Sheffield in 1792 as an assistant to Joseph Gales, auctioneer, bookseller and printer of the Sheffield Register, who introduced him into the local Lodge of Oddfellows, to which he later addressed a song. In 1794, Gales left England to avoid political prosecution and Montgomery took the paper in hand, changing its name to the Sheffield Iris.
These were times of political repression. Montgomery was twice imprisoned on charges of sedition, first in 1795 for printing a poem to celebrate the fall of the Bastille in revolutionary France, and secondly in 1796 for criticising a magistrate for forcibly dispersing a political protest in Sheffield. Turning his jail experiences to some profit, he then published a pamphlet of poems written during his captivity: Prison Amusements (1797). His later prose account of the period appeared in 1840.
For some time the Iris was the only newspaper in Sheffield, but beyond an ability to produce fairly creditable articles from week to week, Montgomery lacked the journalistic skills to take full advantage of his position. Other newspapers arose to fill the place which his might have held and in 1825 he sold out to a local bookseller, John Blackwell.
Meanwhile, Montgomery continued to write poetry. He achieved some fame with The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806), a poem in six parts written in seven-syllable cross-rhymed quatrains. It addressed the French annexation of Switzerland and quickly went through two editions. When it was denounced the following year in the conservative Edinburgh Review as a poem that would be speedily forgotten, Lord Byron came to its defence in the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Nevertheless, within 18 months a fourth impression of 1500 copies was issued from the very presses that had printed the criticism, and several more would follow. This success brought Montgomery a commission from the printer Bowyer to write a poem on the abolition of the slave trade, to be published with other poems on the subject by Elizabeth Benger and James Grahame in a handsome illustrated volume. The subject appealed to the poet's philanthropic enthusiasm and his own family associations with the West Indies. The four-part poem in heroic couplets appeared in 1809 as The West Indies.
Montgomery also used heroic couplets for The World before the Flood (1812), a piece of historical reconstruction in ten cantos. He then turned to attacking the lottery in Thoughts on Wheels (1817) and took up the cause of chimney sweeps' apprentices in The Climbing Boys' Soliloquies. His next major poem was Greenland (1819) in five cantos of heroic couplets. It was prefaced by a description of the ancient Moravian church, its 18th-century revival and its mission to Greenland in 1733. The poem was noted for the beauty of its descriptions:
The moon is watching in the sky; the stars
Are swiftly wheeling on their golden cars;
Ocean, outstretcht with infinite expanse,
Serenely slumbers in a glorious trance;
The tide, o'er which no troubled spirits breathe,
Reflects a cloudless firmament beneath,
Where poised as in the centre of a sphere
A ship above and ship below appear;
A double image pictured on the deep,
The vessel o’er its shadow seems to sleep;
Yet, like the host of heaven, that never rest,
With evanescent motion to the west,
The pageant glides through loneliness and night,
And leaves behind a rippling wake of light.
— Canto 1, lines 1-14
Later career
Montgomery's only other long poem, after retiring from newspaper editorship, was The Pelican Island (1828): nine cantos of descriptive blank verse, which garnered mixed responses, ranging between the summarily dismissive and Blackwood's Magazine's "the best of all Montgomery's poems: in idea the most original, in execution the most powerful."
Montgomery himself expected that his name would live, if at all, in his hymns. Some of these, such as "Hail to the Lord's Anointed", "Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire", "Stand up and Bless the Lord" and the carol "Angels from the Realms of Glory", are still sung. "The Lord Is My Shepherd" is a popular hymn with many denominations, based on Psalm 23. "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" has been adopted as a favourite in the Latter Day Saint movement. The earliest of his hymns dates from his days in Wath on Dearne and he added to their number over the years. The main boost came when the Rev. James Cotterill arrived at the parish church St Paul's, a chapel of ease to St Peter's, Sheffield's only parish church, in 1817.
Cotterill had compiled and published A Selection of Psalms and Hymns Adapted to the Services of the Church of England in 1810, but to his disappointment and concern he found that his new parishioners did not take kindly to using it. He therefore enlisted the help of James Montgomery to help him revise the collection and improve it by adding some hymns of the poet's own composition. This new edition, meeting with the approval of the Archbishop of York (and eventually of the parishioners at St Paul's), was finally published in 1820. In 1822 Montgomery published his own Songs of Zion: Being Imitations of Psalms, the first of several more collections of hymns. During his life he composed some 400 hymns, although less than a hundred of them are commonly sung today.
From 1835 until his death, Montgomery lived at The Mount in Glossop Road, Sheffield. He was well regarded in the city and played an active part in its philanthropy and religious life. He died on 30 April 1854, was honoured by a public funeral, and buried in Sheffield General Cemetery. He had remained unmarried.
Legacy
In 1861, a monument designed by John Bell (1811–1895) was erected over his grave in the Sheffield cemetery at a cost of £1000, raised by public subscription on the initiative of the Sheffield Sunday School Union, of which he was among the founding members. On its granite pedestal is inscribed: "Here lies interred, beloved by all who knew him, the Christian poet, patriot, and philanthropist. Wherever poetry is read, or Christian hymns sung, in the English language, 'he being dead, yet speaketh' by the genius, piety and taste embodied in his writings." There are also extracts from his poems "Prayer" and "The Grave". After the statue fell into disrepair it was moved in 1971 to the precincts of Sheffield Cathedral, where there is also a memorial window to him.
Elsewhere in Sheffield there are various streets named after Montgomery, as is a Grade II-listed drinking fountain on Broad Lane. The Surrey Street meeting hall of the Sunday Schools Union (now known as The Montgomery) was named in his honour in 1886. It houses a 420-seat theatre, which also bears his name. Elsewhere, Wath-upon-Dearne, flattered by being called "the queen of villages" in his work, has repaid the compliment by naming after him a community hall, a street and a square. His birthplace in Irvine was renamed Montgomery House after he had paid the town a return visit in 1841, but it has since been demolished.
Other works
Montgomery, James (1816). Verses to the memory of the late Richard Reynolds, of Bristol.
Poetical Works, four editions in 1821, 1836, 1841, and 1854
Editor: The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend and Climbing-Boy's Album, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1824
Editor: The Christian Psalmist; or, Hymns, Selected and Original, Glasgow: Chalmers and Collins, 1825. sixth edn. 1829; Read Books, 2008, ISBN 9781409799900
Editor: The Christian poet; or, selections in verse on sacred subjects, Wm Collins, Glasgow, 1825
An Essay on the Phrenology of the Hindoos and Negroes, London: Printed for E. Lloyd, 1829
Original Hymns For Public, Private, and Social Devotion, London: Longman, Brown, Green, 1853
Sacred Poems and Hymns: For Public and Private Devotion. D. Appleton. 1854.
Prose by a Poet, 2 vols, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1824
Montgomery, James (1833). Lectures on poetry and general literature.
A practical detail of the cotton manufacture of the United States of America: and the state of the cotton manufacture of that country contrasted and compared with that of Great Britain; with comparative estimates of the cost of manufacturing in both countries ... J. Niven. 1840.
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its southern suburbs were transferred from Derbyshire to the city council. It is the largest settlement in South Yorkshire.
The city is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines and the valleys of the River Don with its four tributaries: the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf. Sixty-one per cent of Sheffield's entire area is green space and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park and is the fifth largest city in England. There are more than 250 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, which is estimated to contain around 4.5 million trees. The city is 29 miles (47 km) south of Leeds and 32 miles (51 km) east of Manchester.
Sheffield played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution, with many significant inventions and technologies having developed in the city. In the 19th century, the city saw a huge expansion of its traditional cutlery trade, when stainless steel and crucible steel were developed locally, fuelling an almost tenfold increase in the population. Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the collapse of coal mining in the area. The Yorkshire ridings became counties in their own right in 1889, the West Riding of Yorkshire county was disbanded in 1974. The city then became part of the county of South Yorkshire; this has been made up of separately-governed unitary authorities since 1986. The 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield, consistent with other British cities. Sheffield's gross value added (GVA) has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £11.3 billion in 2015. The economy has experienced steady growth, averaging around 5% annually, which is greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber.
Sheffield had a population of 556,500 at the 2021 census, making it the second largest city in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. The Sheffield Built-up Area, of which the Sheffield sub-division is the largest part, had a population of 685,369 also including the town of Rotherham. The district borough, governed from the city, had a population of 554,401 at the mid-2019 estimate, making it the 7th most populous district in England. It is one of eleven British cities that make up the Core Cities Group. In 2011, the unparished area had a population of 490,070.
The city has a long sporting heritage and is home both to the world's oldest football club, Sheffield F.C., and the world's oldest football ground, Sandygate. Matches between the two professional clubs, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, are known as the Steel City derby. The city is also home to the World Snooker Championship and the Sheffield Steelers, the UK's first professional ice hockey team.
The history of Sheffield, a city in South Yorkshire, England, can be traced back to the founding of a settlement in a clearing beside the River Sheaf in the second half of the 1st millennium AD. The area now known as Sheffield had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but significant growth in the settlements that are now incorporated into the city did not occur until the Industrial Revolution.
Following the Norman conquest of England, Sheffield Castle was built to control the Saxon settlements and Sheffield developed into a small town, no larger than Sheffield City Centre. By the 14th century Sheffield was noted for the production of knives, and by 1600, overseen by the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, it had become the second centre of cutlery production in England after London. In the 1740s the crucible steel process was improved by Sheffield resident Benjamin Huntsman, allowing a much better production quality. At about the same time, Sheffield plate, a form of silver plating, was invented. The associated industries led to the rapid growth of Sheffield; the town was incorporated as a borough in 1843 and granted a city charter in 1893.
Sheffield remained a major industrial city throughout the first half of the 20th century, but the downturn in world trade following the 1973 oil crisis, technological improvements and economies of scale, and a wide-reaching restructuring of steel production throughout the European Economic Community led to the closure of many of the steelworks from the early 1970s onward. Urban and economic regeneration schemes began in the late 1980s to diversify the city's economy. Sheffield is now a centre for banking and insurance functions with HSBC, Santander and Aviva having regional offices in the city. The city has also attracted digital start-ups, with 25,000 now employed in the digital sector.
Early history
Photograph showing a moorland view. The moor is covered in heather of varying shades of brown. Stones are scattered across the moor. In the middle distance there is a rock outcrop atop a small hill. Behind it is a larger hill with a flat top.
Carl Wark, an Iron Age hill fort in southwest Sheffield.
The earliest known evidence of human occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire to the east of the city. Artefacts and rock art found in caves at this site have been dated by archaeologists to the late Upper Palaeolithic period, at least 12,800 years ago. Other prehistoric remains found in Sheffield include a Mesolithic "house"—a circle of stones in the shape of a hut-base dating to around 8000 BC, found at Deepcar, in the northern part of the city. This has been ascribed to the Maglemosian culture. (grid reference SK 2920 9812). The site's culture has similarities to Star Carr in North Yorkshire, but gives its name to unique "Deepcar type assemblages" of microliths in the archaeology literature. A cup and ring-marked stone was discovered in Ecclesall Woods in 1981, and has been dated to the late Neolithic or Bronze Age periods. It, and an area around it of 2 m diameter, is a scheduled ancient monument.
During the Bronze Age (about 1500 BC) tribes sometimes called the Urn people started to settle in the area. They built numerous stone circles, examples of which can be found on Ash Cabin Flat, Froggatt Edge and Hordron Edge (Hordron Edge stone circle). Two Early Bronze Age urns were found at Crookes in 1887, and three Middle Bronze Age barrows found at Lodge Moor (both suburbs of the modern city).
Iron Age
During the British Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes. It is this tribe who in around 500 BC are thought to have constructed the hill fort that stands on the summit of a steep hill above the River Don at Wincobank, in what is now northeastern Sheffield. Other Iron Age hill forts in the area are Carl Wark on Hathersage Moor to the southwest of Sheffield, and one at Scholes Wood, near Rotherham. The rivers Sheaf and Don may have formed the boundary between the territory of the Brigantes and that of a rival tribe called the Corieltauvi who inhabited a large area of the northeastern Midlands.
Roman Britain
The Roman invasion of Britain began in AD 43. By 51 the Brigantes had submitted to the clientship of Rome, eventually being placed under direct rule in the early 70s. Few Roman remains have been found in the Sheffield area. A minor Roman road linking the Roman forts at Templeborough and Navio at Brough-on-Noe possibly ran through the centre of the area covered by the modern city, and Icknield Street is thought to have skirted its boundaries. The routes of these roads within this area are mostly unknown, although sections of the former were thought, by Hunter and Leader, be visible between Redmires and Stanage on an ancient road known as the Long Causeway. In recent years some scholars have cast doubt on this, with an initial survey of Barber Fields, Ringinglow, suggesting the Roman Road took a route over Burbage Edge. The remains of a Roman road, possibly linked to the latter, were discovered in Brinsworth in 1949.
In April 1761, tablets or diplomas dating from the Roman period were found in the Rivelin Valley south of Stannington, close to what was possibly the course of the Templeborough to Brough-on-Noe road. These tablets included a grant of citizenship and land or money to a retiring Roman auxiliary of the Sunuci tribe of Belgium.
To . . . . . . . . the son of Albanus, of the tribe of the Sunuci, late a foot soldier in the first cohort of the Sunuci commanded by M. Junius Claudianus.
In addition there have been finds dating from the Roman period on Walkley Bank Road, which leads onto the valley bottom.
There have been small finds of Roman coins throughout the Sheffield area, for example 30 to 40 Roman coins were found near the Old Great Dam at Crookesmoor, 19 coins were found near Meadowhall in 1891, 13 in Pitsmoor in 1906, and ten coins were found at a site alongside Eckington cemetery in December 2008. Roman burial urns were also found at Bank Street near Sheffield Cathedral, which, along with the name of the old lane behind the church (Campo Lane[n 2]), has led to speculation that there may have been a Roman camp at this site. It is unlikely that the settlement that grew into Sheffield existed at this time. In 2011 excavations revealed remains of a substantial 1st or 2nd century AD Roman rural estate centre, or 'villa' on what is believed to be a pre-existing Brigantian farmstead site at Whirlow Hall Farm in South-west Sheffield.
Following the departure of the Romans, the Sheffield area may have been the southern part of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet, with the rivers Sheaf and Don forming part of the boundary between this kingdom and the kingdom of Mercia. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira. The Britons of Elmet delayed this English expansion into the early part of the 7th century. An enduring Celtic presence within this area is evidenced by the settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield—the word Wales derives from the Germanic word Walha, and was originally used by the Anglo-Saxons to refer to the native Britons.
The origins of Sheffield
The name Sheffield is Old English in origin. It derives from the River Sheaf, whose name is a corruption of shed or sheth, meaning to divide or separate. Field is a generic suffix deriving from the Old English feld, meaning a forest clearing. It is likely then that the origin of the present-day city of Sheffield is an Anglo-Saxon settlement in a clearing beside the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don founded between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in this region (roughly the 6th century) and the early 9th century.
The names of many of the other areas of Sheffield likely to have been established as settlements during this period end in ley, which signifies a clearing in the forest, or ton, which means an enclosed farmstead. These settlements include Heeley, Longley, Norton, Owlerton, Southey, Tinsley, Totley, Treeton, Wadsley, and Walkley.
The earliest evidence of this settlement is thought to be the shaft of a stone cross dating from the early 9th century that was found in Sheffield in the early 19th century. This shaft may be part of a cross removed from the church yard of the Sheffield parish church (now Sheffield Cathedral) in 1570. It is now kept in the British Museum.
A document from around the same time, an entry for the year 829 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, refers to the submission of King Eanred of Northumbria to King Egbert of Wessex at the hamlet of Dore (now a suburb of Sheffield): "Egbert led an army against the Northumbrians as far as Dore, where they met him, and offered terms of obedience and subjection, on the acceptance of which they returned home". This event made Egbert the first Saxon to claim to be king of all of England.
The latter part of the 9th century saw a wave of Norse (Viking) settlers and the subsequent establishment of the Danelaw. The names of hamlets established by these settlers often end in thorpe, which means a farmstead. Examples of such settlements in the Sheffield area are Grimesthorpe, Hackenthorpe, Jordanthorpe, Netherthorpe, Upperthorpe, Waterthorpe, and Woodthorpe. By 918 the Danes south of the Humber had submitted to Edward the Elder, and by 926 Northumbria was under the control of King Æthelstan.
In 937 the combined armies of Olaf Guthfrithson, Viking king of Dublin, Constantine, king of Scotland and Owain ap Dyfnwal, king of the Cumbrians, invaded England. The invading force was met and defeated by an army from Wessex and Mercia led by King Æthelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh. The location of Brunanburh is unknown, but some historians have suggested a location between Tinsley in Sheffield and Brinsworth in Rotherham, on the slopes of White Hill. After the death of King Athelstan in 939 Olaf Guthfrithson invaded again and took control of Northumbria and part of Mercia. Subsequently, the Anglo-Saxons, under Edmund, re-conquered the Midlands, as far as Dore, in 942, and captured Northumbria in 944.
The Domesday Book of 1086, which was compiled following the Norman Conquest of 1066, contains the earliest known reference to the districts around Sheffield as the manor of "Hallun" (or Hallam). This manor retained its Saxon lord, Waltheof, for some years after the conquest. The Domesday Book was ordered written by William the Conqueror so that the value of the townships and manors of England could be assessed. The entries in the Domesday Book are written in a Latin shorthand; the extract for this area begins:
TERRA ROGERII DE BVSLI
M. hi Hallvn, cu XVI bereuvitis sunt. XXIX. carucate trae
Ad gld. Ibi hb Walleff com aula...
Translated it reads:
LANDS OF ROGER DE BUSLI
Photograph showing an old stone church with a short wide tower. The view is taken from a graveyard, there is a large tomb stone in the foreground and the church is surrounded by trees.
The remains of Beauchief Abbey.
In Hallam, one manor with its sixteen hamlets, there are twenty-nine carucates [~14 km2] to be taxed. There Earl Waltheof had an "Aula" [hall or court]. There may have been about twenty ploughs. This land Roger de Busli holds of the Countess Judith. He has himself there two carucates [~1 km2] and thirty-three villeins hold twelve carucates and a half [~6 km2]. There are eight acres [32,000 m2] of meadow, and a pasturable wood, four leuvae in length and four in breadth [~10 km2]. The whole manor is ten leuvae in length and eight broad [207 km2]. In the time of Edward the Confessor it was valued at eight marks of silver [£5.33]; now at forty shillings [£2.00].
In Attercliffe and Sheffield, two manors, Sweyn had five carucates of land [~2.4 km2] to be taxed. There may have been about three ploughs. This land is said to have been inland, demesne [domain] land of the manor of Hallam.
The reference is to Roger de Busli, tenant-in-chief in Domesday and one of the greatest of the new wave of Norman magnates. Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria had been executed in 1076 for his part in an uprising against William I. He was the last of the Anglo-Saxon earls still remaining in England a full decade after the Norman conquest. His lands had passed to his wife, Judith of Normandy, niece to William the Conqueror. The lands were held on her behalf by Roger de Busli.
The Domesday Book refers to Sheffield twice, first as Escafeld, then later as Scafeld. Sheffield historian S. O. Addy suggests that the second form, pronounced Shaffeld, is the truer form, as the spelling Sefeld is found in a deed issued less than one hundred years after the completion of the survey. Addy comments that the E in the first form may have been mistakenly added by the Norman scribe.
Roger de Busli died around the end of the 11th century, and was succeeded by a son, who died without an heir. The manor of Hallamshire passed to William de Lovetot, the grandson of a Norman baron who had come over to England with the Conqueror. William de Lovetot founded the parish churches of St Mary at Handsworth, St Nicholas at High Bradfield and St. Mary's at Ecclesfield at the start of the 12th century in addition to Sheffield's own parish church. He also built the original wooden Sheffield Castle, which stimulated the growth of the town.
Also dating from this time is Beauchief Abbey, which was founded by Robert FitzRanulf de Alfreton. The abbey was dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint Thomas Becket, who had been canonised in 1172. Thomas Tanner, writing in 1695, stated that it was founded in 1183. Samuel Pegge in his History of Beauchief Abbey notes that Albinas, the abbot of Derby, who was one of the witnesses to the charter of foundation, died in 1176, placing foundation before that date.
Medieval Sheffield
Following the death of William de Lovetot, the manor of Hallamshire passed to his son Richard de Lovetot and then his son William de Lovetot before being passed by marriage to Gerard de Furnival in about 1204. The de Furnivals held the manor for the next 180 years. The fourth Furnival lord, Thomas de Furnival, supported Simon de Montfort in the Second Barons' War. As a result of this, in 1266 a party of barons, led by John de Eyvill, marching from north Lincolnshire to Derbyshire passed through Sheffield and destroyed the town, burning the church and castle.
A new stone castle was constructed over the next four years and a new church was consecrated by William de Wickwane the Archbishop of York around 1280. In 1295 Thomas de Furnival's son (also Thomas) was the first lord of Hallamshire to be called to Parliament, thus taking the title Lord Furnivall. On 12 November 1296 Edward I granted a charter for a market to be held in Sheffield on Tuesday each week. This was followed on 10 August 1297 by a charter from Lord Furnival establishing Sheffield as a free borough.
The Sheffield Town Trust was established in the Charter to the Town of Sheffield, granted in 1297. De Furnival, granted land to the freeholders of Sheffield in return for an annual payment, and a Common Burgery administrated them. The Burgery originally consisted of public meetings of all the freeholders, who elected a Town Collector. Two more generations of Furnivals held Sheffield before it passed by marriage to Sir Thomas Nevil and then, in 1406, to John Talbot, the first Earl of Shrewsbury.
The Bishops' House.
In 1430 the 1280 Sheffield parish church building was pulled down and replaced. Parts of this new church still stand today and it is now Sheffield city centre's oldest surviving building, forming the core of Sheffield Cathedral. Other notable surviving buildings from this period include the Old Queen's Head pub in Pond Hill, which dates from around 1480, with its timber frame still intact, and Bishops' House and Broom Hall, both built around 1500.
Post-medieval Sheffield
The fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, George Talbot took up residence in Sheffield, building the Manor Lodge outside the town in about 1510 and adding a chapel to the Parish Church c1520 to hold the family vault. Memorials to the fourth and sixth Earls of Shrewsbury can still be seen in the church. In 1569 George Talbot, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, was given charge of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was regarded as a threat by Elizabeth I, and had been held captive since her arrival in England in 1568.
Talbot brought Mary to Sheffield in 1570, and she spent most of the next 14 years imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and its dependent buildings. The castle park extended beyond the present Manor Lane, where the remains of Manor Lodge are to be found. Beside them is the Turret House, an Elizabethan building, which may have been built to accommodate the captive queen. A room, believed to have been the queen's, has an elaborate plaster ceiling and overmantel, with heraldic decorations.[58] During the English Civil War, Sheffield changed hands several times, finally falling to the Parliamentarians, who demolished (slighted) the castle in 1648.
The Industrial Revolution brought large-scale steel making to Sheffield in the 18th century. Much of the medieval town was gradually replaced by a mix of Georgian and Victorian buildings. Large areas of Sheffield's city centre have been rebuilt in recent years, but among the modern buildings, some old buildings have been retained.
Industrial Sheffield
Sheffield developed after the industrial revolution because of its geography.
Fast-flowing rivers, such as the Sheaf, the Don and the Loxley, made it an ideal location for water-powered industries to develop. Raw materials, like coal, iron ore, ganister and millstone grit for grindstones, found in the nearby hills, were used in cutlery and blade production.
As early as the 14th century, Sheffield was noted for the production of knives:
Ay by his belt he baar a long panade,
And of a swerd ful trenchant was the blade.
A joly poppere baar he in his pouche;
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche.
A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
Round was his face, and camus was his nose;
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Reeve's Tale from The Canterbury Tales
By 1600 Sheffield was the main centre of cutlery production in England outside London, and in 1624 The Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire was formed to oversee the trade. Examples of water-powered blade and cutlery workshops from around this time can be seen at the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and Shepherd Wheel museums in Sheffield.
Around a century later, Daniel Defoe in his book A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, wrote:
This town of Sheffield is very populous and large, the streets narrow, and the houses dark and black, occasioned by the continued smoke of the forges, which are always at work: Here they make all sorts of cutlery-ware, but especially that of edged-tools, knives, razors, axes, &. and nails; and here the only mill of the sort, which was in use in England for some time was set up, (viz.) for turning their grindstones, though now 'tis grown more common. Here is a very spacious church, with a very handsome and high spire; and the town is said to have at least as many, if not more people in it than the city of York.
Sheffield area.
In the 1740s Benjamin Huntsman, a clock maker in Handsworth, invented a form of the crucible steel process for making a better quality of steel than had previously been available. At around the same time Thomas Boulsover invented a technique for fusing a thin sheet of silver onto a copper ingot producing a form of silver plating that became known as Sheffield plate. Originally hand-rolled Old Sheffield Plate was used for making silver buttons. Then in 1751 Joseph Hancock, previously apprenticed to Boulsover's friend Thomas Mitchell, first used it to make kitchen and tableware. This prospered and in 1762–65 Hancock built the water-powered Old Park Silver Mills at the confluence of the Loxley and the Don, one of the earliest factories solely producing an industrial semi-manufacture. Eventually Old Sheffield Plate was supplanted by cheaper electroplate in the 1840s. In 1773 Sheffield was given a silver assay office. In the late 18th century, Britannia metal, a pewter-based alloy similar in appearance to silver, was invented in the town.
Huntsman's process was only made obsolete in 1856 by Henry Bessemer's invention of the Bessemer converter, but production of crucible steel continued until well into the 20th century for special uses, as Bessemer's steel was not of the same quality, in the main replacing wrought iron for such applications as rails. Bessemer had tried to induce steelmakers to take up his improved system, but met with general rebuffs, and finally was driven to undertake the exploitation of the process himself. To this end he erected steelworks in Sheffield. Gradually the scale of production was enlarged until the competition became effective, and steel traders generally became aware that the firm of Henry Bessemer & Co. was underselling them to the extent of £20 a ton. One of Bessemer's converters can still be seen at Sheffield's Kelham Island Museum.
Stainless steel was discovered by Harry Brearley in 1912, at the Brown Firth Laboratories in Sheffield. His successor as manager at Brown Firth, Dr William Hatfield, continued Brealey's work. In 1924 he patented '18-8 stainless steel', which to this day is probably the most common alloy of this type.
These innovations helped Sheffield to gain a worldwide recognition for the production of cutlery; utensils such as the bowie knife were mass-produced and shipped to the United States. The population of the town increased rapidly. In 1736 Sheffield and its surrounding hamlets held about 7000 people, in 1801 there were 60,000, and by 1901, the population had grown to 451,195.
This growth spurred the reorganisation of the governance of the town. Prior to 1818, the town was run by a mixture of bodies. The Sheffield Town Trust and the Church Burgesses, for example, divided responsibility for the improvement of streets and bridges. By the 19th century both organisations lacked funds and struggled even to maintain existing infrastructure.[52] The Church Burgesses organised a public meeting on 27 May 1805 and proposed to apply to Parliament for an act to pave, light and clean the city's streets. The proposal was defeated.
The idea of a Commission was revived in 1810, and later in the decade Sheffield finally followed the model adopted by several other towns in petitioning for an Act to establish an Improvement Commission. This eventually led to the Sheffield Improvement Act 1818, which established the Commission and included several other provisions. In 1832 the town gained political representation with the formation of a Parliamentary borough. A municipal borough was formed by an Act of Incorporation in 1843, and this borough was granted the style and title of "City" by letters patent in 1893.
In 1832 an outbreak of cholera killed 402 people, including John Blake, the Master Cutler. Another 1,000 residents were infected by the disease. A memorial to the victims stands in Clay Wood where the victims of the outbreak are buried.
From the mid-18th century, a succession of public buildings were erected in the town. St Paul's Church, now demolished, was among the first, while the old Town Hall and the present Cutlers' Hall were among the major works of the 19th century. The town's water supply was improved by the Sheffield Waterworks Company, who built reservoirs around the town. Parts of Sheffield were devastated when, following a five-year construction project, the Dale Dyke dam collapsed on Friday 11 March 1864, resulting in the Great Sheffield Flood.
Sheffield's transport infrastructure was also improved. In the 18th century turnpike roads were built connecting Sheffield with Barnsley, Buxton, Chesterfield, Glossop, Intake, Penistone, Tickhill, and Worksop. In 1774 a 2-mile (3.2 km) wooden tramway was laid at the Duke of Norfolk's Nunnery Colliery. The tramway was destroyed by rioters, who saw it as part of a plan to raise the price of coal. A replacement tramway that used L-shaped rails was laid by John Curr in 1776 and was one of the earliest cast-iron railways. The Sheffield Canal opened in 1819 allowing the large-scale transport of freight.
This was followed by the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway in 1838, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway in 1845, and the Midland Railway in 1870. The Sheffield Tramway was started in 1873 with the construction of a horse tram route from Lady's Bridge to Attercliffe. This route was later extended to Brightside and Tinsley, and further routes were constructed to Hillsborough, Heeley, and Nether Edge. Due to the narrow medieval roads the tramways were initially banned from the town centre. An improvement scheme was passed in 1875; Pinstone Street and Leopold Street were constructed by 1879, and Fargate was widened in the 1880s. The 1875 plan also called for the widening of the High Street; disputes with property owners delayed this until 1895.
Steel production in the 19th century involved long working hours, in unpleasant conditions that offered little or no safety protection. Friedrich Engels in his The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 described the conditions prevalent in the city at that time:
In Sheffield wages are better, and the external state of the workers also. On the other hand, certain branches of work are to be noticed here, because of their extraordinarily injurious influence upon health. Certain operations require the constant pressure of tools against the chest, and engender consumption in many cases; others, file-cutting among them, retard the general development of the body and produce digestive disorders; bone-cutting for knife handles brings with it headache, biliousness, and among girls, of whom many are employed, anæmia. By far the most unwholesome work is the grinding of knife-blades and forks, which, especially when done with a dry stone, entails certain early death. The unwholesomeness of this work lies in part in the bent posture, in which chest and stomach are cramped; but especially in the quantity of sharp-edged metal dust particles freed in the cutting, which fill the atmosphere, and are necessarily inhaled. The dry grinders' average life is hardly thirty-five years, the wet grinders' rarely exceeds forty-five.
Sheffield became one of the main centres for trade union organisation and agitation in the UK. By the 1860s, the growing conflict between capital and labour provoked the so-called 'Sheffield Outrages', which culminated in a series of explosions and murders carried out by union militants. The Sheffield Trades Council organised a meeting in Sheffield in 1866 at which the United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades—a forerunner of the Trades Union Congress (TUC)—was founded.
The 20th century to the present
In 1914 Sheffield became a diocese of the Church of England, and the parish church became a cathedral. During the First World War the Sheffield City Battalion suffered heavy losses at the Somme and Sheffield itself was bombed by a German zeppelin.
The recession of the 1930s was only halted by the increasing tension as the Second World War loomed. The steel factories of Sheffield were set to work making weapons and ammunition for the war. As a result, once war was declared, the city once again became a target for bombing raids. In total there were 16 raids over Sheffield, but it was the heavy bombing over the nights of 12 and 15 December 1940 (now known as the Sheffield Blitz) when the most substantial damage occurred. More than 660 people died and numerous buildings were destroyed.
Following the war, the 1950s and 1960s saw many large scale developments in the city. The Sheffield Tramway was closed, and a new system of roads, including the Inner Ring Road, were laid out. Also at this time many of the old slums were cleared and replaced with housing schemes such as the Park Hill flats, and the Gleadless Valley estate.
In February 1962, the city was devastated by the Great Sheffield Gale. Extremely localised high winds across the city, reaching up to 97 mph (156 km/h), killed four people, injured more than 400, and damaged more than 150,000 houses across the city, leaving thousands homeless.
Sheffield's traditional manufacturing industries (along with those of many other areas in the UK), declined during the 20th century. In the 1980s, it was the setting for two films written by locally-born Barry Hines: Looks and Smiles, a 1981 film that portrayed the depression that the city was enduring, and Threads, a 1984 television film that simulated a nuclear winter in Sheffield after a warhead is dropped to the east of the city.
The building of the Meadowhall shopping centre on the site of a former steelworks in 1990 was a mixed blessing, creating much needed jobs but speeding the decline of the city centre. Attempts to regenerate the city were kick-started by the hosting of the 1991 World Student Games and the associated building of new sporting facilities such as the Sheffield Arena, Don Valley Stadium and the Ponds Forge complex. Sheffield began construction of a tram system in 1992, with the first section opening in 1994.
Starting in 1995, the Heart of the City Project has seen public works in the city centre: the Peace Gardens were renovated in 1998, the Millennium Gallery opened in April 2001, and a 1970s town hall extension was demolished in 2002 to make way for the Winter Garden, which opened on 22 May 2003. A series of other projects grouped under the title Sheffield One aim to regenerate the whole of the city centre.
Sheffield was particularly hard hit during the 2007 United Kingdom floods and the 2010 'Big Freeze'. The 2007 flooding on 25 June caused millions of pounds worth of damage to buildings in the city and led to the loss of two lives. Many landmark buildings such as Meadowhall and the Hillsborough Stadium flooded due to being close to rivers that flow through the city. In 2010, 5,000 properties in Sheffield were identified as still being at risk of flooding. In 2012 the city narrowly escaped another flood, despite extensive work by the Environment Agency to clear local river channels since the 2007 event. In 2014 Sheffield Council's cabinet approved plans to further reduce the possibility of flooding by adopting plans to increase water catchment on tributaries of the River Don. Another flood hit the city in 2019, resulting in shoppers being contained in Meadowhall Shopping Centre.
Between 2014 and 2018, there were disputes between the city council and residents over the fate of the city's 36,000 highway trees. Around 4,000 highway trees have since been felled as part of the ‘Streets Ahead’ Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract signed in 2012 by the city council, Amey plc and the Department for Transport to maintain the city streets. The tree fellings have resulted in many arrests of residents and other protesters across the city even though most felled trees in the city have been replanted, including those historically felled and not previously replanted. The protests eventually stopped in 2018 after the council paused the tree felling programme as part of a new approach developed by the council for the maintenance of street trees in the city.
In July 2013 the Sevenstone project, which aimed to demolish and rebuild a large part of the city centre, and had been on hold since 2009, was further delayed and the company developing it was dropped. The city council is looking for partners to take a new version of the plan forwards. In April 2014 the council, together with Sheffield University, proposed a plan to reduce the blight of empty shops in the city centre by offering them free of charge to small businesses on a month-by-month basis.
In December 2022, thousands of homes in Hillsborough and Stannington were left without a gas supply for more than a week following a serious failure of the local network. Sheffield City Council declared a major incident as temperatures dropped below freezing in unheated homes, and aid was distributed to local residents.
E52
In recent times many motor manufacturers, particularly those with a significant sporting heritage, have felt the need to reference iconic models from the past when launching their latest. BMW has proved adept at exploiting this 'retro' trend, commencing in 1996 with the Z3 coupé and convertible, the styling of which brilliantly recalled its fabulous '328' sports car of pre-war days. Its next effort along similar lines - the 'Z07' concept car of 1997 - took its inspiration from the post-war Albrecht von Goetz-designed '507', a luxurious limited-edition roadster.
The sensation of the 1997 Tokyo Auto Show, the Z07 was received so enthusiastically that BMW took the decision to press ahead with a production version: the Z8. For the most part the Z8 remained remarkably faithful to the original concept, retaining the 507-like twin-nostril front grille and distinctive front-wing vents. A period-style interior had been one of the Z07's most remarked upon features, and that too made it into the Z8.
The Z8's body panelling and spaceframe chassis were fabricated in lightweight and corrosion resistant aluminium, while the 32-valve 4.941 cc V8 engine, shared with the M5 saloon, was built by BMW's Motorsport division. With 400 bhp on tap, the Z8 raced to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.7 seconds and only the built-in rev limiter stopped it from exceeding 250km/h (155mph). Power reached the run-flat tyres via a Getrag six-speed manual gearbox. Needless to say, the Z8 also came with all the modern appurtenances one would expect of a flagship model: traction control, stability control, front and side air bags, GPS navigation, climate control and power operation of the seats, steering wheel and convertible hood all being included in the package.
The fact that the Z8 was a low-volume model assembled, for the most part, by hand, enabled BMW to offer customers considerable freedom in personalising their cars. Further enhancing its appeal to collectors, the factory announced that a 50-year stockpile of Z8 parts would be maintained. Despite a (US) launch price of over $ 128.000, initial demand was so high that a bidding war broke out, with many Z8s selling for well in excess of that figure. By the time production ceased at the end of 2002, 5.703 of these fabulous cars had been built.
But that was not quite the end of the Z8 story, for BMW tuning specialist Alpina then introduced its own, even more exclusive version: the Alpina V8 Roadster. Alpina's product was less hard-edged and considerably more refined than the original, being equipped with a 4,8-litre engine from the 5-Series Alpina B10 V8 S and an Alpina-specified ZF five-speed 'Switchtronic' automatic transmission with paddle-shift operation. With a maximum of 375bhp on tap, the Roadster's slightly smaller engine was re-tuned for greater torque at lower revs, which better suited the automatic transmission. Top speed was limited to 161 mph, with 60 mph coming up in 5,0 seconds, only a couple of tenths slower than the original Z8.
The suspension was revised to provide a more supple ride, and the original 18" wheels and run-flat tyres replaced with 20" rims and tyres with taller sidewalls. Re-trimmed in softer Nappa leather, the interior boasted many Alpina-specific touches including the steering wheel, gauges, and gear selection display. As its specification suggests, the Alpina V8 was targeted at the North American market, which took 450 units out of the 555 scheduled for production.
Car & Driver reckoned the car was well suited to its newly acquired persona: 'In fact, some of us, who regard the Z8 more as a design icon than a serious sports car, reckon the Alpina Roadster V8, with its easygoing power delivery and automatic transmission, is what this car should have been all along.'
First registered on 1st September 2004, the limited edition Alpina V8 offered here has had only three owners – all collectors – from new. The first owner, David Michael of Florida, USA kept the car until March 2010 when it passed to a Mr Scholdra Germany. The current vendor purchased the BMW for his private collection in July 2014, by which time it had covered only 17.948 kilometres from new. The current odometer reading is circa 20.000 kilometres.
Superior to those of the original Z8, this car's special features include heated seats; climate control; AM/FM stereo; CD changer; centre-mounted Alpina gauges in blue; xenon headlights with Dynamic Auto-Levelling; hand-stitched Alpina steering wheel with shift buttons and Alpina centre cap; 20" Alpina Dynamic alloy wheels; and a battery charger for when the car is in storage. It has also had over mats fitted since new.
Finished in black with two-tone cream/black leather interior, the car comes complete with hardtop, hardtop cover, hardtop stand, and hardtop stand cover; wind deflector and cover; original tools; front cup holder; phone pack (new in box); original wallet; and the Alpina key pouch containing both numbered keys, chauffeurs key, and plastic key. Accompanying documentation consists of the original US Certificate of Title; original German registration document; German Klassische document (dated 2012) and a current UK V5C registration document and MoT certificate.
Recently serviced by Sytners BMW in the UK, this Z8 Alpina Roadster is in immaculate condition throughout.
Les Grandes Marques du Monde au Grand Palais
Bonhams
Estimated : € 320.000 - 380.000
Parijs - Paris
Frankrijk - France
February 2017