This photo was given to me by a photographer who took photos for Newspapers and Magazines, and when I find her name, I will attribute it to her. I think her first name was Helga or similar.

 

Updating and adjusting photo as I go along.

 

The motorbike is a Z1300 Kawasaki A5, non fuel injected, the sidecar was DJP sidecar, made by David Pearce from warrigul, coincidentally, his factory was in Perse Street, different spelling of course, but a little quirky anyway.

 

I strengthened it by grounding off the black powder coat putting ropes along it and fiberglassing over them, I did the same inside, it give it the strength to withstand damage during accidents, etc.

 

The extra fuel tank in the middle is out of a Mazda car, as is the fuel pump I used. I could supply fuel to the engine, or to the engine and motorbike tank at the same time. The motor bike tank held app 27 Litres and the Mazda tank held app 40 litres.

 

The reason I used a Mazda tank is as you can see, it fits in the brackets between the outfit and the sidecar, basically sharing the weight between the bike & outfit.

 

I went around Australia with this outfit in record time in 1986, I took my three legged dog, Missy with me. Had a few adventures along the way, including hitting a Kangaroo at Whim Creek, about a hundred K's out of Port Headland at 100 K's plus, slaughtered the Kangaroo & Joey. Knocked out my front brakes.

 

I stupidly kept going without fixing the front brakes, all I had to do was fill up the master cylinder, bleed and tighten up the line that Kangaroo turned and drained the fluid out. I was stupidly tired, but kept driving through the night, got to Perth in the night & bogged it on a vacant block of land, so I climbed into & and went to sleep to daylight.

 

I took ages to get it back on the bitchumen & off through Perth along Highway one around the coast. Because I didn't fix the front brakes, were most of your motorcycle braking comes from, even more so in an outfit, I couldn't make it around a left hander and rolled at very high speed, rolling over near the bottom end of western australia, Bridgeport area ???

 

The poor doggy, a three legged Border Collie X Kelpie was thrown out of the sidecar and when I woke up, the bike was right way up, on it's wheels, with the key in the ignition, bentm but when I turned it, the ever reliable Z1300 roared into life.

 

I drove to a place where I stayed for the night in a hotel / motel room, my first shower and bed for a long time, but while I had a good sleep, I was sore & sorry I spent all day at a local Suzuki dealership getting it fixed, then headed off at night, dodging Kangaroos.

 

The trip was a record for one person riding an outfit, two people have done it quicker in an outfit and one person has done it in under 7 days, that's about 2,000 K's plus, every day. I did it in 14 days with a lot of trouble, no help or sponsorship.

 

Murray, Missy & Outfit c1986 - Uncropped

Description given as father and son by the ebay seller. From what I could find using Ancestry and the WW1 and WW2 military records, their war service is as follows:

WW1 - Robert Conroy Parrott:

Religion - Church of England

Occupation - Soldier

Address - Parkside, South Australia

Marital status - Married

Age at embarkation - 42

Next of kin - Wife, Mrs R A Parrott, 31 Jaffrey Street, Parkside, South Australia

Previous military service - Inst'l Staff

Enlistment date - 18 February 1918

Rank on enlistment - 2nd Lieutenant

Unit name - 48th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement

AWM Embarkation Roll number - 23/65/4

Embarkation details - Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 22 March 1918

Rank from Nominal Roll - 2nd Lieutenant

Unit from Nominal Roll - 43rd Battalion

Fate - Returned to Australia 25 June 1919

Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)*second given name two spellings Conroy and Conway

 

WW2 William Robert Conway Parrott:

Service - Australian Army

Service Number - SX4310

Date of Birth - 13 Oct 1907

Place of Birth - SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND

Date of Enlistment - 03 Jun 1940

Locality on Enlistment - BRIGHTON ST, SA

Place of Enlistment - ADELAIDE, SA

Next of Kin - PARROTT, ROBT

Date of Discharge - 04 Oct 1945

Rank - Staff Sergeant

Posting at Discharge - 9 Australian Division

Prisoner of War - No

Honours - None for display

 

(found on ebay)

 

In fact, given how wildly out the colours I originally blocked in the blue bits were with it's not looking too bad now. The left wall was dreadful at first, as I'd got the colour and the approach for the underpainting wrong, and it's taken a fair bit of reworking to rescue it - just need to adjust it's shape now and do the final texture and shading. The acrylics paint over earlier coats nicely as I thought they would - and I think the wash for the shadow on the pavement may well be possible - thinned some of the paint for shading the green part.

Overall, fairly pleased with progress so far.

Given her age, it is perfect surgery she could have hoped for and since there is no point hiding it, we do hope that she would give a public statement soon. After all not every day do you get to see a surgery gone so well as the Beverly D'Angelo plastic surgery celebsplasticsurgery.com/beverly-d-angelo-plastic-surgery/

Given that non-LED street lights are almost extinct in Chilwell, I was pleased to see a couple of local GEC Z9538s were still extant, and as far as I know are still operational. I even found a Simplex Aries that was still in situ, potentially still working if the puddle inside hasn't affected the electricals.

 

There are still a few GEC Z5718s and Z5698Us if you know where to look, plus a couple of dead Simples Aries, Gemini and GEC Z9538s. Funnily enough it seems the Thorn Beta 2 might be rarer than all of the above, since I know of just two remaining and one has been marked for removal (unsurprisingly it's the Kirkbride Ct one missing its bowl). I keep checking back to see if I can catch the lighting crew in the act of replacing it and invariably not convince them to let me have the old lantern.

 

Claremont Ave used to have an impressive installation of GEC Z5718s that ran SON, with some SOX ones nearby, but unfortunately within the past year or-so they've been V-MAXed... on their original, incredibly short concrete columns. The whole reason they had post-tops in the first place was because it was an upmarket street, yet now the LED replacements look worse there than on your average 'hockey stick' column.

 

Given that lanterns tend to disappear a few months after I find and photograph them, I won't mention where the one in the photo above is located, just to see if that makes it last longer...

 

(more details later, as time permits)

 

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

Once upon a time, I had serious intentions of running the New York marathon. It was back in 1979, and the whole thing was much less formal than it is now. Indeed, it was sufficiently informal that Rosie Ruiz was accidentally given a “finished time” of 2:56:29 for the New York event that year, which qualified her for the 1980 Boston marathon. It was later discovered that she had not run the entire NYC course (nor did she do so up in Boston on April 21, 1980), and her time was ultimately rescinded in both races. Had her times stayed in the record books, her Boston time of 2:31:56 would have been the fastest female time ever in the Boston marathon and the third-fastest female time ever recorded in any marathon...

 

Informal as the New York marathon was in those ancient days, you still couldn’t just show up at the starting line and expect to be welcomed. On the other hand, all that was necessary to get an official invitation was going down to the main branch of the U.S. Post Office on 34th Street at midnight on some long-forgotten summer night,and waiting in line with a bunch of equally crazy people. I got my entry ticket (or letter, or certificate, or whatever it was) a few days later, and began following a fairly serious training regimen, working my way up to a modest 10-mile race … until a business trip took me to Sydney, Australia for most of the month of August, 1979. Between business and social events, and the cold, wet weather of Sydney’s winter season, I didn’t do any running at all for that whole month … and with my training regimen broken, I wisely decided not to run the marathon at all.

 

But since then, I’ve always had a fondness for the NYC marathon — especially considering how much it has grown, and what a city-wide celebration it has become. I missed the event in 2013 and 2012, so it has been three years since I watched on the sidelines in 2011. With the promise of cold-but-sunny weather this year, I decided to return once again — and, as in 2011, I positioned myself at roughly the 24.5-mile point, at the beginning of a downhill run at roughly 78th Street, at the side of the Central Park “inner roadway.”

 

The runners pass by all afternoon, and well into the evening; but it’s a little more difficult to anticipate when the lead runners will reach any particular point. There are now so many participants in the marathon (about 50,000) that the runners are released in “waves,” beginning with those on hand-operated wheelchair/bicycles, and the “elite” women, the elite men, and three or four waves of mere mortals. There was an additional delay this year, because the headwinds were so strong that the initial wave had great difficulty propelling their wheeled vehicles up over the “hump” of the Tappan Zee bridge. So if you’re standing somewhere along the route, at the 10-mile mark, or the 20-mile mark, or (as I was) the 24.5 mile mark, you can only guess at the moment when the lead runners — or a friend or family member whom you want to cheer onward to the finish line — might be coming near you.

 

On the other hand, there are some clues. Helicopters hover above the lead runners, low enough that you can hear the roar of their blades; and there are two or three waves of police cars and motorcycles zooming ahead of the runners, pushing people back to the sidelines, and ensuring that there are no disruptions or obstacles to slow them down. Then — and it’s always an adrenaline rush! — you see the official race car, driving just a few feet ahead of the lead runners, with a huge race clock mounted on its roof, showing those fast-moving runners the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds since they started their journey back at the edge of Staten Island.

 

The lead runners, of whom there are often two or three or four even up to the last mile, are often several minutes ahead of the next ones; but those who are in positions three, four, five or ten, and who will get no recognition at all from the press, the media, or the crowd when they finish … well, they still run as if their lives depend on it. And the crowd cheers them on, clapping and calling out their names and urging them onward.

 

One of the differences I noticed this year was the widespread use of bicycle horns and cow-bells that the onlookers used to create a cacophony of merry noise; I don’t know if the runners took it as a sign of encouragement, but it sure sounded that way to me …

 

I stayed longer than I had intended, and took several hundred more photos that I had planned … but they’re all just bits on the camera’s digital memory card, so it doesn’t really matter. One might argue that I should have stayed for eight or ten hours, until the last runner had straggled by. And perhaps I should have photographed each of the 50,000 runners, for I’m sure they each had their own story to tell. But after a while, it gets overwhelming — and the faces and bodies and brightly colored shirts and tights and shoes begin to blur…

 

I think I got a representative collection of photos; and the video clips will give you a sense of the noise and the motion of what seemed like an endless stream of humanity racing past … but to really understand it, you need to be there in person. Barring a crippling storm (like Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon), you’ll find another crowd of 50,000 runners racing through Central Park at the end of next year’s marathon, on the first Sunday in November. And with any luck, I’ll be there with my camera …

 

Who knows: maybe even Rosie Ruiz will be there, too. It turns out that she was arrested in 1982 for embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company where she worked; after a week in jail and a sentence of five years’ probation, she moved back to south Florida, where she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal. But as of the year 2000, she still insisted that she had run the entire 1980 Boston marathon. C’est la vie...

Housesteads Roman Fort is the remains of an auxiliary fort on Hadrian's Wall, at Housesteads, Northumberland, England, south of Broomlee Lough. The fort was built in stone around AD 124, soon after the construction of the wall began in AD 122 when the area was part of the Roman province of Britannia. Its name has been variously given as Vercovicium, Borcovicus, Borcovicium, and Velurtion. The 18th-century farmhouse Housesteads gives the modern name. The site is owned by the National Trust and is in the care of English Heritage. Finds can be seen at the site, in the museum at Chesters, and in the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Hadrian's Wall was begun in AD 122. A fort was built in stone at the Housesteads Roman Fort site around AD 124 overlying the original Broad Wall foundation and Turret 36B, about two miles north east of an existing fort at Vindolanda. The fort was repaired and rebuilt several times, its northern defences being particularly prone to collapse. A substantial civil settlement (vicus) existed to the south, outside the fort, and some of the stone foundations can still be seen, including the so-called "Murder House", where two skeletons were found beneath an apparently newly-laid floor when excavated.

 

In the 2nd century AD, the garrison consisted of an unknown double-sized auxiliary infantry cohort and a detachment of legionaries from Legio II Augusta. In the 3rd century, it comprised Cohors I Tungrorum, augmented by the numerus Hnaudifridi and the Cuneus Frisiorum, a Frisian cavalry unit, cuneus referring to a wedge formation. The Tungrians were still there in the 4th century, according to the Notitia Dignitatum. By 409 AD the Romans had withdrawn.

  

The northern granary at Vercovicium, looking east. The pillars supported a raised floor to keep food dry and free from vermin. They are not part of a hypocaust.

 

The latrines at Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall, hygienically placed at the lowest corner of the fort. The water tank at left still has original lead sealing between its slabs.

Most other early forts straddle the Wall and therefore protrude into barbarian territory. It is also unusual for Britain in that it has no running water supply and is dependent upon rainwater collection (for which purpose there is a series of large stone-lined tanks around the periphery of the defences). It also has one of the best-preserved stone latrines in Roman Britain.

 

The name of the fort has been given as Borcovicus, Borcovicium, and Velurtion. An inscription found at Housesteads with the letters VER, is believed to be short for Ver(covicianorum) – the letters ver being interchangeable with bor in later Latin. The name of the 18th-century farmhouse of Housesteads provides the modern name.

 

The site is now owned by the National Trust and is currently in the care of English Heritage. Finds from Vercovicium can be seen in the site museum, in the museum at Chesters, and in the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Housesteads is a former farm whose lands include the ruins of the fort. In 1604 Hugh Nixon, "Stealer of cattle and receiver of stolen goods", became the tenant of Housesteads farm. From 1663, Housesteads was the home of the Armstrongs, a notorious family of Border Reivers. Nicholas Armstrong bought the farm in 1692, only to have to sell it again in 1694 to Thomas Gibson of Hexham for the sum of £485. They remained as tenants. They were a well-known band of horse thieves and cattle rustlers who used the old fort as a place to hold the stolen horses and cattle. They traded as far afield as Aberdeen and the south of England. At one time every male member of the family was said to have been a 'broken man', formally outlawed by English or Scottish authorities. Nicholas was hanged in 1704, and his brothers fled to America. The Armstrongs lived in a typical 16th-century defensive bastle house of two storeys: the ground floor for livestock and the upper level for living quarters. Its ruins remain built up against the south gate of the Roman fort, with external stone steps and narrow loop windows. A corn-drying kiln was inserted into the gate's guard chamber in the 17th century.

 

In 1698, the farm had been sold to Thomas Gibson who turned the land around the fort to agriculture and thus ploughed up numerous Roman artefacts. The 17th-century bastle house was replaced by a farmhouse located over the Roman hospital, which was sketched by William Stukeley in 1725. Throughout the 18th century Housesteads was farmed by a single tenant farming family. Since Hodgson recorded the presence of William Magnay as the tenant during that period this fixes the tenure. In particular, the well (thought to be Roman) was documented as having actually been built by William, and used by the family as a bath. Interest in the fort increased in the 19th century, particularly after the farm was purchased by the amateur historian John Clayton in 1838, to add to his collection of Roman Wall farms. The Roman site was cleared of later buildings by Clayton, and the present farmhouse built about 1860. John Maurice Clayton attempted to auction the fort in 1929. It did not reach its reserve and was donated to the National Trust in 1930. The farm was later owned by the Trevelyans who gave the land for the site museum.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

History

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Roman invasion

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

 

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

 

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

 

Establishment of Roman rule

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Roman military organisation in the north

In 84 AD

In 84 AD

 

In 155 AD

In 155 AD

 

Hadrian's Wall, and Antonine Wall

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

3rd century

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

 

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

 

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

 

Northern campaigns, 208–211

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Diocletian's reforms

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

4th century

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

End of Roman rule

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

 

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

 

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

 

Sub-Roman Britain

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

 

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

 

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

 

Trade

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Economy

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Government

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Demographics

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

 

Town and country

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

 

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

 

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

 

Alcester (Alauna)

Alchester

Aldborough, North Yorkshire (Isurium Brigantum) C

Bath (Aquae Sulis) C

Brough (Petuaria) C

Buxton (Aquae Arnemetiae)

Caerleon (Isca Augusta) C

Caernarfon (Segontium) C

Caerwent (Venta Silurum) C

Caister-on-Sea C

Canterbury (Durovernum Cantiacorum) C

Carlisle (Luguvalium) C

Carmarthen (Moridunum) C

Chelmsford (Caesaromagus)

Chester (Deva Victrix) C

Chester-le-Street (Concangis)

Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum) C

Cirencester (Corinium) C

Colchester (Camulodunum) C

Corbridge (Coria) C

Dorchester (Durnovaria) C

Dover (Portus Dubris)

Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) C

Gloucester (Glevum) C

Great Chesterford (the name of this vicus is unknown)

Ilchester (Lindinis) C

Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum) C

Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) C

London (Londinium) C

Manchester (Mamucium) C

Newcastle upon Tyne (Pons Aelius)

Northwich (Condate)

St Albans (Verulamium) C

Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) C

Towcester (Lactodurum)

Whitchurch (Mediolanum) C

Winchester (Venta Belgarum) C

Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) C

York (Eboracum) C

 

Religion

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Christianity

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

 

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

 

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

 

Environmental changes

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

 

Legacy

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

 

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

Postal Date: May 28, 1864, Valparaiso, Indiana

Scott Catalog Number of Postage Stamp: 65

Collection: Steven R. Shook

 

SENDER:

Unknown

 

RECIPIENT:

J. G. Dickson, M.D.

Canonsburg

Washington Co.

Pa.

 

REMARK:

Dr. John Glenn Dickson was a partner in the medical practice of Dr. J. V. Herriott in Canonsburg, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Herriott later moved to practice medicine in Valparaiso, Porter County, Indiana. It is quite likely that this letter was sent to Dr. Dickson by Dr. Herriott.

 

The following biography of James Glenn Dickson appears in:

 

J. H. Beers Company. 1893. Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania. Chicago, Illinois: J. H. Beers and Company. 1,486 pp.

 

JAMES GLENN DICKSON, M. D., a resident for the past fifty years of Canonsburg, Penn., was born February 15, 1825, in what is now South Fayette township, Allegheny Co., Penn. His parents were William and Margaret (Glenn) Dickson.

 

Dr. Dickson traces his ancestry in a direct line through a period of over three hundred years, and the year 1893 enables him to look upon the faces of the tenth generation.

 

The earliest records, which have yet been obtained by Dr. Dickson, tell of one John Dickson, a merchant in Glasgow, Scotland, "a man of religious character and possessed of considerable wealth." This merchant with his good wife stirred up others to pray with and for them, that the blessing of a son might be given them, "vowing that if their petition was granted they would devote him to the service of the Lord." Such a son was the Rev. David Dickson, born possibly in 1591, probably as early as 1583, as the exact date can not positively be stated. He was educated in the University of Glasgow, where he became a professor in 1641, remaining in that position until 1651, where he accepted a similar position in the Edinburgh University. He was appointed minister to Irvine in 1618, and of him it has been said: "The Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh was truly a great man; the Professor of Divinity at Glasgow was a greater man; but the minister of Irvine was the greatest man of all." His repudiation of the Five Articles of Perth, as issued by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1618, won for him much persecution, as well as great honor. He was pre- eminently a scholar, a preacher, a worthy Scotchman, as his biography and writings show. In all there are seven works, the offspring of his master intellect, copies of three of which, with a sketch of his life issued by the committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, are in possession of Rev. David Craig Stewart, of Hoboken, N. J., and were obtained of him recently in Edinburgh.

 

Alexander Dickson, a son of Rev. David Dickson, wrote the dedication in 1664 to the English preface of his father's last work, calling it a child of his father's old age the English translation of Latin treatise on the subject of the Conscience; his father having died in 1663, probably eighty years old, certainly not younger than seventy-two. Another son of Rev. David Dickson was John, who became a merchant in Edinburgh, Scotland; and this John established his sons David and George in mercantile business in Armagh, Ireland, as a branch of the Edinburgh house.

 

The records show that three sons of the Armagh merchant, George Dickson, came to America, including the family also of one of these three, that of Andrew, who had married a Seceder girl in Armagh previous to his emigration, and whose family record (Andrew's) is preserved in a Bible which gives the date of birth of each of his ten children, and the record of the marriage of nine of these. This Andrew Dickson, of the fifth generation thus far traced, was great-grandfather of Dr. James G. Dickson of the eighth generation.

 

The six elder children of Andrew Dickson were born in Ireland between the years 1734 and 1743, and the other four were born in America near Chambersburg, Penn., where their father had settled. The eldest of the four born in this country was Andrew, whose birth was in 1748, and who died in service in the Revolutionary army. The Bible containing Andrew Dickson's family record is now over one hundred and sixty years old, and is in possession of Rev. David French Dickson, of East Palestine, Ohio, a nephew of Dr. Dickson. Andrew Dickson's children were named: Hannah, George, Jean, James, Esther, Sarah, Andrew, Agnes, Mary Ann and John. George Dickson, the eldest son and second child in this family, was the grandfather of the subject of this sketch. George Dickson was born December 7, 1735, and died in the fall of 1817. He married, in 1770, Rachel McKee, then twenty-nine years of age, a daughter of James McKee, of Chambersburg, Penn. In the summer of 1772 George came to Black Lick creek (now in Indiana county), accompanied by his younger brother, John, and bought 400 acres of land. There they built a cabin, cleared what land they could during the summer, and then went back to Chambersburg for the winter. In 1773 they returned and cleared more, and in 1774 George moved his family into the cabin. He continued to clear and cultivate the land until 1778, when, in the greatest haste, they were obliged to flee upon receiving news of the Wyoming massacre and near approach of the hostile Indians. With his wife and their small children, James, Andrew and Agnes, all mounted upon two saddle horses, they summarily returned across the mountains to Chambersburg. In 1782 George and his brother John again visited their property in western Pennsylvania to find everything in ashes. Coming southward to Pittsburgh, suitable land was found and purchased by George Dickson, it being some 440 acres on the north branch of Miller's run, and purchased from one Thomas Reed, an early settler, who held it under a patent grant. John Dickson went further west into Ohio, where he married and settled near Poland.

 

The family of George Dickson numbered eight children three sons and five daughters. These uncles and aunts to Dr. James Dickson were James, born January, 1772; Andrew, born May 27, 1775; Agnes, born February 27, 1777; Mary, born September 4, 1780; Rachel, born November 13, 1782; Hannah, born November 18, 1785; Elizabeth, born August 10, 1789; and William, the father of Dr. Dickson, born August 2, 1791. James, the eldest, married a Miss Frazee, and their family consisted of several daughters; James Dickson died in Cuyahoga county, Ohio. His brother, Andrew, also married a Miss Frazee, a sister of James' wife; Andrew died near DeKalb, Ohio, leaving a large family, chiefly sons. Agnes, the third child in George Dickson's family, died at the age of nineteen near Noblestown, Penn.; she had doubtless been named for her father's sister Agnes, the wife of Mr. Bryar, of Chambersburg. Mary, the fourth member of George Dickson's family, married Joseph Burnside, and resided near Canonsburg, where her death occurred at an advanced age, having for many years before her death been totally blind; her family numbered three daughters and one son, namely: Margaret Jane (recently deceased), the wife of Rev. David Thompson, D. D., of Monmouth, Ill.; Rachel, wife of John Foley; Mary Anne, now Mrs. Haslep, of near Monmouth, Ill.; and George Dickson Burnside, who died a few years since on his farm near Canonsburg. Rachel Dickson, the fifth in George Dickson's family, died near Scottsville, Penn., and was the wife of Solomon Irons; their family numbered six children, viz.: James, John, Rachel, William, Joseph and Andrew. Hannah, George Dickson's sixth child, became the wife of Andrew Henderson, and of their six children four were sons, named respectively: George, John, William and Ebenezer. Hannah Dickson Henderson died near Granville, Ill. The next younger sister was Elizabeth, the seventh child of George Dickson; she became the wife of James Stewart, and at her death which occurred near Clinton, Penn., left no family. The youngest child of the grandfather, George Dickson, was William, the father of Dr. James G. Dickson.

 

William Dickson was born in South Fayette township, Allegheny Co., Penn., in 1791. On the death of his father he came into possession of the homestead, and became one of the most successful farmers in his part of the country, one of his specialties being the rearing of fine-wool Merino sheep, his flock of such being the first introduced into his neighborhood. He was a man of exemplary piety, and honorable dealings with his neighbors. In the year of his father's death, 1817, he married, and was elected ruling elder, to fill the vacancy caused by his father's demise, in the Noblestown (Penn.) Associate (now United Presbyterian) congregation, which office he continued to fill until his death, which occurred March 18, 1872, in his eighty-second year. He resided all his life on the farm where his father had spent the last thirty-four years of his life. William Dickson was twice married, his first wife being Margaret Glenn, a daughter of James and Jennie (Buchanan) Glenn, who came to western Pennsylvania a few years subsequent to the arrival of William Dickson's parents. The Glenns came from Lancaster county and settled in Westmoreland (now Allegheny) county, prior to 1800. Margaret Glenn was born in Lancaster county, Penn., in 1791. The marriage of William Dickson and Margaret Glenn occurred in 1817. Their children were as follows: Jennie Glenn, born August 21, 1818, died in infancy, May 9, 1819; Rachel, born July 18, 1820; George, born October 8, 1822; James Glenn, born February 15, 1825; Joseph, born December 10, 1826, died February 9, 1827; Mary J., born April 28, 1828; Andrew and William A. (twins), born June 15, 1831 (Andrew died in infancy, May 5, 1832). The mother of these children died November 18, 1852, at the age of sixty-one years. For his second wife William Dickson married, in 1857, Susan Aikins, who preceded her husband a little over two weeks in entering the Heavenly home, her death occurring March 1, 1872, and their remains repose in the cemetery at Robinson Run church, where are also the remains of William Dickson's parents. Rachel, daughter of William Dickson, became the wife of Robert Potter, and with her two daughters, Maggie D. and M. Lulu, has resided near Noblestown since the death of her husband July 16, 1887.

 

George Dickson, elder brother of Dr. Dickson, was married to Margaret French, daughter of Rev. David French, D. D., and her son, Rev. David French Dickson, has been mentioned earlier in this sketch. George Dickson's second wife was Eliza Glenn, who left no family at her death. In November, 1892, occurred the death of Annie Rankin, third wife of George Dickson. James Glenn Dickson is the next younger brother, and to present his lineage is the design of this sketch. Mary J. Dickson, a younger sister, married James Clark, and resided in Buffalo township, Washington Co., Penn., until 1870, when they removed to Canonsburg, where her husband's death occurred December 18, 1885. Their family consisted of Nettie, who died in infancy; William Dickson Clark, whose wife (now deceased) was Mrs. Lizzie McKeown; Marguerite S., the wife of Culbert M. Greer; Anna Mary, the wife of Rev. David Craig Stewart; and James Addison Clark, who resides with his mother.

 

William A. Dickson, the youngest of his father's family, like his father, William Dickson, came into possession of the ancestral estate, where with his family he resided for many years until his removal to the McBurney farm near Midway, Washington Co., Penn. His wife was Elizabeth McBurney, daughter of Robert and Eliza (Welsh) McBurney. William A. Dickson's family of eight children are: Margaret, Elizabeth, Robert, Anna S., William, Agnes, Walter and Bertha. William A. Dickson has in his possession his mother's Bible inscribed as follows: "Margaret Glenn, her book August 12, 1812." which also contains record of the birth of each of Dr. Dickson's sisters and brothers. The ponderous volume "Boston's Complete Works" is in possession of Rev. David F. Dickson, and contains the annals previously quoted of Dr. Dickson's grandfather, George Dickson's family.

 

Dr. James Glenn Dickson was brought up on his father's farm in South Fayette township, Allegheny county, and received his primary education at the subscription schools of the neighborhood, which was supplemented by a few terms at the public school, and instruction under the preceptorship of Rev. John M. French, pastor of the Associate Church at Noblestown; then in 1843 he entered Jefferson College, from which he graduated in 1847 under the presidency of Dr. Robert J. Breckenridge, of Kentucky. In 1848 he commenced the study of medicine with Dr. J. V. Herriott, of Canonsburg, attending during the winters of 1849-50 and 1850-51 Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Penn., where in the spring of 1851 he received his medical diploma. In the summer of that year he commenced the practice of his chosen profession at Mount Jackson, Lawrence Co., Penn., remaining there one year. Then at the solicitation of his preceptor, Dr. Herriott, he returned to Canonsburg and entered into a partnership with him, which existed about two years, at the end of which time Dr. Herriott removed to Philadelphia, Dr. Dickson continuing the practice alone in Canonsburg. Upon the return of his old partner, after an absence of several years, Dr. Dickson again associated with him, but at the end of three years Dr. Herriott moved to Valparaiso, Ind., since when our subject has been alone in his professional practice. He has enjoyed an unbroken, most successful practice of over forty years in Canonsburg, a longer period than has fallen to the lot of any other physician of the place.

 

Dr. Dickson was married September 4, 1856, to Margaret H. Buchanan, who was born February 28, 1828 in North Strabane township, Washington Co., Penn., a daughter of Alexander and Mary (Miller) Buchanan. Two children were born to Dr. Dickson and wife, viz.: Mary Jeannette and William Alexander, both living with their parents. William A. was married September 24, 1885, to Margaret Gabby Allison (daughter of Hon. Jonathan and Margaret (Gabby) Allison), whose death occurred September 6, 1886, followed six weeks later by the death of their infant daughter, Maggie Olive. On October 23, 1890, occurred the marriage of William A. Dickson and Mary Lizzie Martin, daughter of Dr. John W. and Elizabeth (Allison) Martin. Their infant daughters are Aneita Marie and Margaret Elizabeth, who, with their parents, are part of Dr. Dickson's household. The family are members of the United Presbyterian Church, the Doctor having united with it when it was known as the Associate Church. Politically, he was first an Old-line Whig, and, since the organization of the party, he has been a stanch Republican. The commodious family residence was built by the Doctor some eight years ago, on the corner of Pike street and Greenside avenue.

 

The years herein recounted bring the Dickson lineage through ten generations; of the tenth there are in direct line eight representatives, viz.: Three children of Rev. David F. and Annie M. (McCready) Dickson George, David and Zetta; three grandchildren of Mary J. (Dickson) Clark, viz.: Clark and Lucile Greer, son and daughter of Culbert Means Greer and Marguerite S. (Clark) Greer, and Anna Mary, daughter of Rev. David Craig Stewart and Anna M. (Clark) Stewart; added to these the Doctor's two grandchildren, before named (Aneita Marie and Margaret Elizabeth), and the eight representatives of the tenth generation from John Dickson, of Glasgow, Scotland, are recounted.

 

The Doctor is wedded to his profession, and as he is by nature, as well as by education, eminently qualified for his, the most benevolent of all professions, he commands and enjoys the respect and confidence of his many patrons.

 

Copyright 2014. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

"Wake up at 5am, I fell in love again. Something wrong with living life like this. At work can't help but stare, long legs, her dark brown hair."

 

- Self

{Sooo...Have I mentioned that I'm sick of me being the only thing I can find pictures to take of lately?}

this old beauty was given to me by my girlfriend´s dad who found it amongst his dad´s stuff. her solid metal body is somewhat battered and bruised but the lens seemed to be fully intact and clear. so i got some 120 roll film and gave it a try. the roll will be developed soon and i´m anxious to see if the shutter is still working properly.

 

the nettar folding cams were made by the zeiss ikon company from the 1930´s till the late 50´s. this one is a nettar 515/2 which i learned were released in 1937. more info about the nettar series here

Looking east from our eastern field toward (but not at given the blocking hills) the Sierra Nevada mountain range. While it is a pretty green now it will soon turn brown in the summer heat.

St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk

 

Given that our parish churches almost without exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should be obvious that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval. Even when the actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is still a Victorian conception.

 

Inevitably, the question arises of what was there before the restoration and what wasn't. The obvious answer is that we must assume that nothing is as it first appears.

 

A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may not actually be the truth is here in the flat fields between Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be rather bleak in winter, but in summer the churchyard here is verdant and golden, as beautiful a place as any in the county. The church is large, and yet unusually narrow. It sits on a mound that has been cut down on one side by the road. In the churchyard you'll find the well-known memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car crash in 1990.

 

In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.

 

St George is one of the great Suffolk churches. Although it may externally appear a little severe, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the rest, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not yet full of the 'walls of glass' confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which may explain the tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it doesn't take much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall itself isn't medieval, so where had it been all those years? Is it possible that the current window tracery is not medieval at all?

 

Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins' book England's Thousand Best Churches, which sends plenty of visitors to its locked door, and may help stave off the inevitable for a while, for there is no real congregation here any more and the church is moribund. Regular services are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on special occasions. The key is kept across the road, where the very nice lady told me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It seems likely that care of it will be conveyed into the hands of the Churches Conservation Trust.

 

You step in through the chancel door (the lock here is very awkward, but do persevere) and if you are anything like me you will head straight down to the west end where you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some questions. Unusually, it features a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ being on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly isn't looking its best. But I think there is more going on here than meets the eye. Fonts were plastered over in Elizabethan times, and only relief that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was removed from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor purpose until it was returned in the 19th century.

 

The story of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to find that the church was at last undergoing repair. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for services. A new Rectory was being built. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for almost the middle forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good friend of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to think how, at this seminal moment, Rickards might have informed the thought of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.

 

During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous set of bench ends - Ringham did the same thing at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham's work is so good that it is sometimes hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. However, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the weirder stuff is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft's bench ends is partly the sheer quantity - there are perhaps 60 carvings - but also that there are several unique subjects.

 

The carvings appear to be part of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock - you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the bird with a man's head, from similar carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your heard should start to go "Hmmmm....." because some of the carvings here are clearly not from the same group. It is hard to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the same workshop, or even from the same decade. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was common practice in the 19th century to replace medieval bench ends on modern benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches made out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the kind of person to do a thing like that?

 

Well, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley's church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards acquired it after finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from one of the Ipswich churches. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying around, much of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of person to counterfeit his church's medieval inheritance?

 

Well, yes he probably was. The faux-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are clearly not medieval at all, but were in fact the work of the young Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are clearly to the young girl's design, and Pevsner notes that others are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, although the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at least are very close copies of the Flemish roundels of the same subjects in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.

 

Truly medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-painting still discernible on the north wall. It was probably one of the last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of course, as is the fine rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval figure glass in the upper tracery of some of the windows, including St Agnes holding a lamb and four Old Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard's commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we step through into the chancel, and suddenly the whole thing moves up a gear. For here are some things that are truly remarkable.

 

In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft's chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood screen dado is Suffolk's most complete set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, including two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk must be one of the best medieval images in Suffolk, and Mortlock thought the stalls the finest in England.

 

The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are wonderful things: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are weird oriental faces.

 

Now, you know what I am going to ask next. How much of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval work, and there is no reason to believe it might not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we got?

 

Firstly, we should notice that the only other Suffolk church with such a large number of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don't ask you to see this as significant, merely to notice it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together; the stalls that back on to the screen appear to have been integrated into the larger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.

 

However, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche families. The Ashfield arms also appear on the rood screen, and the Ashfields were the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to think that the greater part of the stall structure was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I don't know. But I think they have to be considered as part of the same set as those at Norton. In which case they may have come from the same church, which may have been this one, but may not have been. Almost certainly, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were originally in the quire of Bury Abbey.

 

Other remarkable things in St George include FE Howard's beautiful war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton's unexpectedly gorgeous St George, which serves the same purpose. He's not an artist I usually admire, but it is as good as his work at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.

 

But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather heavy altarpiece. They were given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show images from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and were almost certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. The carvings were once brightly painted, and piled up in a block rather than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century.

 

One cold winter's night in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing more was seen or heard of them until 1982, when they were discovered on display in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one. Taken to Holland, they were used as security for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They were bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which immediately identified them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display, and a Dutch woman who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.

 

The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back. An injunction was taken out to stop the new owner removing them from the museum. The parish lost the case, leaving them with a monstrous legal bill, but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their purchase from the owner, paid off the legal bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at vast cost, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain's liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.

 

Today, the carvings are fixed firmly in place and alarmed, so they won't be going walkabout again. But a little part of me wonders if they really should be here at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they weren't here originally, and they weren't even in England originally. Wouldn't it be better if they were displayed somewhere safer, where people could pay to see them, and provide some income for the maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they might even be able to leave it open.

 

Given the near-ubiquity of the Enviro200 these days, it may surprise you to know that Arriva The Shires had not owned a single example until July 2013.

 

This is now changing as seven examples (3811-3817), displaced from route 491 at Arriva London North's Enfield Garage when the route transferred to Go-Ahead London General on 1st June, are now being refurbished and will be allocated to Garston Garage. The plan is to use them on Harrow circular routes H18 and H19, which are also due a frequency increase from 31st August to coincide with a new contract. The existing buses used on these routes will be cascaded to other Transport for London routes operated out of Garston and will enable elderly Darts to be withdrawn.

 

3811 (formerly ENL11?) has already arrived back from its refurbishment, and is seen basking in the summer sun outside Harrow Bus Station during the afternoon of Monday 29th July, awaiting its next run round the clockwise H18. The blinds have a somewhat makeshift appearance and are presumably temporary.

Aankomst in Rotterdam van het containerschip EVER GIVEN , VB TIGER , ROTTERDAM , SD STINGRAY en RT ROB van Boluda Towage assisteerden naar de ECT in de Amazonehaven.29-7-2021 gezien vanaf de KRVE 71

This old wheel borrow has given up hauling ore or any supplies for it's owner and sits in the dirt, just resting.

via Facebook ift.tt/29Equ7c

a detour the 7yrold and i frequently take even when we have been issued a strict no-changes itinerary by the Authority.

Practicing my walk on the way back through Leicester Square as I was given a bit of a dressing down by my friend...

 

"Emily you look amazing but you have to sort out that fucking walk of yours!"

 

I walk like a bloke apparently and it draws attention. It was a good point well made and I very much appreciate her blunt honesty so for the rest of the night I was very conscious of it.

 

Smaller steps, legs close together, knees almost brushing and swing the hips, swing the hips, swing the hips...

 

Love walking through Central London late at night with the crowds, the life and the lights.

A very specific date was given as a caption to this photo, not just a guess by me at a particular decade. 2014 Streetview image: www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4813987,-3.1797766,3a,75y,270h,...

 

With less traffic than the old photo. I'm not good on cars of this era, but that Austin light commercial in the middle stands out as being quite unusual. I think it's an A70 Hereford with some sort of coachbuilt bodywork that doesn't immediately match anything I can find on a quick search.

At one time large rewards were given by London surgeons in exchange for bodies. In Great Yarmouth in 1827 Thomas Vaughan exhumed at least 10 bodies from the graveyard of St Nicholas Church. He was employed by the vicar's son Sir Astley Cooper an anatomist who also became surgeon to Queen Victoria. The recently buried bodies were loaded into crates and then on to trains to London. It's thought that more than 20 bodies were exhumed from the graveyard in the same year. Thomas Vaughan was jailed for the crimes while Sir Astley Copper is remembered as 'Surgeon to Guy's Hospital London Surgeon to King William IV and Queen Victoria Anatomist Surgical Pioneer'.

 

This is part of a 28 panel mural, created and painted by local people which is next to Vauxhall Bridge near Great Yarmouth Railway Station. The mural illustrates key points in 170 years of the town’s history beginning with Yarmouth’s first railway in 1844.

 

Originally uploaded for the Guess Where Group www.flickr.com/groups/guesswhereuk/</a

The Postcard

 

A high-definition photograph on a postally-unused postcard with no publisher's name.

 

Note the Woolworth store behind the large monument to Queen Victoria which was created by Onslow Ford.

 

Interestingly, many of the faces of the people in the gardens have been blocked out, presumably to preserve their anonymity.

 

A Season of Operas

 

The photograph was taken in 1955, as there is a floral display in the gardens dated 1855 - 1955. It is likely that the display is commemorating the centenary of a remarkable season of operas.

 

In his autobiography (1819-1860), Sir Charles Hallé wrote:

 

"There came in the winter of 1855 the

offer to conduct a series of operas at

the Theatre Royal, Manchester.

A very excellent troupe had been engaged,

comprising Mme. Eudersdorff, Mme. Caradori,

Mlle. Agnes Biiry, Herr Reichardt, Carl Formes,

and other remarkable vocalists.

Most of the operas were given in German,

and it was happiness to me to conduct really

first-rate performances of 'Fidelio,' 'Don

Giovanni,' 'Der Freyschutz,' 'Die Entfuhrung

aus dem Serail,' alternately with more modern

works such as 'Robert le Diable,' 'Les

Huguenots,' 'La Favorita,' and others'.

 

The Manchester Arena Bombing

 

Piccadilly Gardens are just over half a mile from the Manchester Arena. On the 22nd. May 2017, an Islamist extremist suicide bomber detonated a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb as people were leaving the Manchester Arena following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande.

 

Twenty-three people were killed, including the attacker, and 1,017 were injured, many of them children. Several hundred more suffered psychological trauma.

 

The bomber was Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year-old local man of Libyan ancestry. After initial suspicions of a terrorist network, police later said that they believed Abedi had largely acted alone, but that others had been aware of his plans.

 

In March 2020, the bomber's brother, Hashem Abedi, was found guilty of 22 counts of murder and attempting to murder 1,017 others, and was sentenced to life in prison.

 

The incident was the deadliest terrorist attack and the first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom since the 7th. July 2005 London bombings.

 

The Bombing

 

On the 22nd. May 2017 at 22:15 a member of the public reported Abedi, wearing black clothes and a large rucksack to Showsec security. A security guard observed Abedi, but said that he did not intervene in case his concerns about Abedi were wrong, and out of fear of being considered a racist.

 

The security guard tried to use his radio to alert the security control room, but was unable to get through.

 

Police officers on duty that night were subsequently criticised for their behaviour in the hours leading up to the atrocity - including a two-hour dinner break and a 10-mile round trip to buy a kebab.

 

At one point, when Abedi took his final trip through the station to his hiding place in the foyer, there were no BTP officers on duty in the area.

 

At 22:31 the suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device, packed with nuts and bolts to act as shrapnel, in the foyer area of the Manchester Arena.

 

The attack took place after a concert by American pop star Ariana Grande that was part of her Dangerous Woman Tour. 14,200 people had attended the concert.

 

Many exiting concert-goers and waiting parents were in the foyer at the time of the explosion. According to evidence presented at the coroner's inquest, the bomb was strong enough to kill people up to 20 metres (66 ft) away.

 

A report by inquiry chair John Saunders blamed “failings by individuals” for “missed opportunities” to detect and stop bomber Salman Abedi.

 

Saunders outlined a “litany” of failures by venue operators SMG, security firm Showsec and British Transport Police (BTP) - failures that include taking unauthorised two-hour meal breaks and ignoring members of the public who tried to raise the alarm.:

 

-- Reconnaissance Oversights

 

Abedi went to the arena several times to carry out hostile reconnaissance in the run-up to the bombing, visiting on the 18th. and 21st. May, and also the afternoon on the day of the attack.

 

Although arena operator SMG and security firm Showsec “had experience of identifying and responding to potential hostile reconnaissance effectively”, the system for passing on information about suspicious behaviour was “insufficiently robust”.

 

If the Showsec staff on duty at the time, Kyle Lawler and Mohammed Agha - then aged 18 and 19 respectively - had been aware of previous reports of suspicious activity, “it would have increased the possibility” of Abedi being spotted.

 

Inquiry chair Saunders also notes that SMG could have extended the permitted security perimeter from the entrance doors of the arena to the City Room, the foyer where the bomb detonated. “Had permission to push out the perimeter been granted, an attack in the City Room would have been much less likely,” the report says.

 

-- Absence of Officers

 

Despite five officers being assigned to the arena on the night of the attack, “there was a complete absence of any BTP officer in the City Room” in the half hour before Abedi detonated the bomb. And no officers were policing the public areas of the venue between 8.58pm and 9.36pm.

 

The report found that BTP officers “took breaks substantially and unjustifiably” longer than their authorised one hour. Instructions to stagger breaks between 7.30pm and 9pm - when younger children could be leaving the venue - were also ignored.

 

The public inquiry into the attack had previously heard how two officers on duty at the concert, PC Jessica Bullough and PCSO Mark Renshaw, had taken a “two-hour-and-nine-minute dinner break to get a kebab five miles from the arena”. The Telegraph reported:

 

"Bullough has since admitted that were

she present on her shift as she should

have been, she would have likely stopped

Abedi and asked him what was in his bag”.

 

-- The CCTV Blindspot

 

Saunders' report says Abedi chose an “obvious hiding place” in a CCTV blindspot of the arena City Room foyer, having no doubt identified this area during his hostile reconnaissance:

 

“Had the area been covered by CCTV so that

there was no blind spot, it is likely this

behaviour by Abedi would have been identified

as suspicious by anyone monitoring the CCTV."

 

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Showsec security guard Agha said that he had noticed Abedi in the City Room, but only because he “liked the look” of Abedi's trainers.

 

-- Inadequate Patrols

 

The inquiry report says that:

 

"A further missed opportunity to spot Abedi

in the half hour before the bomb detonated

arose from the absence of an adequate

security patrol by Showsec at any stage

during this time”.

 

The supervisor charged with carrying out “pre-egress” checks, Jordan Beak, did so “only very briefly”, patrolling for about ten minutes, during which he just “looked towards the staircases up to the mezzanine area”, where Abedi was sitting:

 

The report notes:

 

“He did not consider them a very important

part of the check because it was not an

egress route. Mr Beak did not go up on to the

mezzanine area and so he did not see Abedi.

This was a significant missed opportunity.”

 

-- Concerns ‘Fobbed Off’

 

Saunders wrote that:

 

"The most striking missed opportunity, and the

one that is likely to have made a significant

difference, was an attempt by a member of the

public to raise concerns about Abedi after

becoming suspicious about the bomber's large

and obviously heavy backpack".

 

Christopher Wild told the inquiry how he had spotted Abedi while waiting for his 14-year-old daughter to leave the concert.

 

According to the BBC, Wild recalled how he approached Abedi and said:

 

“It doesn't look very good you know, what you

see with bombs and such, you with a rucksack

in a place like this, what are you doing?”

 

Abedi reportedly told Wild that he was “waiting for somebody, mate”, before asking what time it was.

 

Wild alerted security guard Agha about his suspicions around fifteen minutes before the blast. But according to the inquiry report:

 

"Agha did not take Christopher Wild’s

concerns as seriously as he should have”.

 

Wild felt that he had been “fobbed off” by the guard, who claimed to already be aware of Abedi. Agha is said to have made “inadequate” efforts to flag down his supervisor or pass on the message via his colleague Lawler, who had a radio.

 

Although Agha did share Wild’s concerns with Lawler, the latter “felt conflicted about what to do” and “stated he was fearful of being branded a racist and would be in trouble if he got it wrong”.

 

Lawler ultimately made an attempt to contact a senior supervisor through the radio, but couldn’t get through, and made no further efforts to communicate what he had been told to anyone else. Saunders wrote:

 

“The inadequacy of Mr Lawler’s response

was a product of his failure to take Mr Wild’s

concern and his own observations sufficiently

seriously. Mr Wild’s behaviour was very

responsible. He stated that he formed the

view that Abedi might let a bomb off.

That was sadly all too prescient, and makes

all the more distressing the fact that no effective

steps were taken as a result of his efforts.”

 

Aftermath of the Explosion

 

Three hours after the bombing, police conducted a controlled explosion on a suspicious item of clothing in Cathedral Gardens. This was later confirmed to have been abandoned clothing and not dangerous.

 

Residents and taxi companies in Manchester offered free transport or accommodation via Twitter to those left stranded at the concert.  Parents were separated from their children attending the concert in the aftermath of the explosion.

 

A nearby hotel served as a shelter for people displaced by the bombing, with officials directing separated parents and children there.  Manchester's Sikh temples along with local homeowners, hotels and venues offered shelter to survivors of the attack.

 

Manchester Victoria railway station, which is partly underneath the arena, was evacuated and closed, and services were cancelled. The explosion caused structural damage to the station, which remained closed until the damage had been assessed and repaired, resulting in disruption to train and tram services.

 

Victoria Station reopened eight days later, following the completion of police investigation work and repairs to the fabric of the building.

 

On the 23rd. May, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the UK's terror threat level had been raised to "critical", its highest level. 

 

In the aftermath of the attack, Operation Temperer was activated for the first time, allowing up to 5,000 soldiers to reinforce armed police in protecting parts of the country.

 

Tours of the Houses of Parliament and the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace were cancelled on 24 May, and troops were deployed to guard government buildings in London.

 

On the 23rd. May, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, via the Nashir Telegram channel, said the attack was carried out by "a soldier of the Khilafah". The message called the attack:

 

"An endeavor to terrorise the mushrikin,

and in response to their transgressions

against the lands of the Muslims."

 

Abedi's sister said that he was motivated by revenge for Muslim children killed by American airstrikes in Syria.

 

The Manchester Arena remained closed until September 2017, with scheduled concerts either cancelled or moved to other venues. It reopened on the 9th. September 2017, with a benefit concert featuring Noel Gallagher and other acts associated with North West England.

 

Later that month, Chris Parker, a homeless man who stole from victims of the attack whilst assisting them, was jailed for 4 years and three months.

 

Casualties of the Attack

 

The explosion killed the attacker and 22 concert-goers and parents who were in the entrance waiting to pick up their children following the show. 119 people were initially reported as injured. This number was revised by police to 250 on the 22nd. June, with the addition of severe psychological trauma and minor injuries.

 

During the public inquiry into the bombing, it was updated in December 2020 to 1,017 people sustaining injuries.

 

The dead included ten people aged under 20; the youngest victim was an eight-year-old girl, and the oldest was a 51-year-old woman. Of the 22 victims, twenty were Britons and two were British-based Polish nationals.

 

North West Ambulance Service reported that 60 of its ambulances attended the scene, carried 59 people to local hospitals, and treated walking wounded on site.  Of those hospitalised, 12 were children under the age of 16.

 

The first doctor thought to have been on scene was an off-duty consultant anaesthetist, Michael Daley. In recognition of his bravery for the role he played in the immediate medical response to the incident, Daley's name was entered into the BMA's Book of Valour in June 2017.

 

The Attacker

 

The bomber, Salman Ramadan Abedi, was a 22-year-old British Muslim of Libyan ancestry. He was born in Manchester to a Salafi family of Libyan-born refugees who had settled in Manchester after fleeing to the UK to escape the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

 

He had two brothers and a sister. He grew up in Whalley Range and lived in Fallowfield. Neighbours described the Abedis as a very traditional and "super religious" family who attended Didsbury Mosque.

 

Abedi attended Wellacre Technology College, Burnage Academy for Boys and The Manchester College. A former tutor remarked that:

 

"Abedi was a very slow, uneducated

and passive person".

 

He was among a group of students at his high school who accused a teacher of Islamophobia for asking them what they thought of suicide bombers. He also reportedly said to his friends that being a suicide bomber "was OK" and fellow college students raised concerns about his behaviour.

 

Abedi's father was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a Salafi jihadist organisation proscribed by the United Nations, and father and son fought for the group in Libya in 2011 as part of the movement to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

 

Abedi's parents, both born in Tripoli, remained in Libya in 2011, while 17-year-old Abedi returned to live in the United Kingdom. He took a gap year in 2014, where he returned with his brother Hashem to Libya to live with his parents. Abedi was injured in Ajdabiya that year while fighting for an Islamist group.

 

The brothers were rescued from Tripoli by the Royal Navy survey ship HMS Enterprise in August 2014 as part of a group of 110 British citizens as the Libyan civil war erupted, taken to Malta and flown back to the UK.

 

According to a retired European intelligence officer, Abedi met with members of the ISIS Battar brigade in Libya, and continued to be in contact with the group upon his return to the UK.

 

An imam at Didsbury mosque recalled that Abedi looked at him "with hate" after he preached against ISIS and Ansar al-Sharia in 2015.

 

Abedi's sister said her brother was motivated by the injustice of Muslim children dying in bombings stemming from the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

 

A family friend of the Abedi's also remarked that Salman had vowed revenge at the funeral of Abdul Wahab Hafidah, who was run over and stabbed to death by a Manchester gang in 2016 and was a friend of Salman and his younger brother Hashem. Hashem later co-ordinated the Manchester bombing with his brother.

 

According to an acquaintance in the UK, Abedi was "outgoing" and consumed alcohol, while another said that Abedi was a "regular kid who went out and drank" until about 2016. Abedi was also known to have used cannabis.

 

He enrolled at the University of Salford in September 2014, where he studied business administration, before dropping out to work in a bakery. Manchester police believe Abedi used student loans to finance the plot, including travel overseas to learn bomb-making.

 

The Guardian reported that despite dropping out from further education, he was still receiving student loan funding in April 2017. Abedi returned to Manchester on the 18th. May after a trip to Libya and bought bomb-making material, apparently constructing the acetone peroxide-based bomb by himself. Many members of the IS Battar brigade trained people in bomb-making in Libya.

 

He was known to British security services and police but was not regarded as a high risk, having been linked to petty crime but never flagged up for radical views.

 

A community worker told the BBC he had called a hotline five years before the bombing to warn police about Abedi's views and members of Britain's Libyan diaspora said they had "warned authorities for years" about Manchester's Islamist radicalisation.

 

Abedi was allegedly reported to authorities for his extremism by five community leaders and family members, and had been banned from a mosque; the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, however, said Abedi was not known to the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme.

 

On the 29th. May 2017, MI5 launched an internal inquiry into its handling of the warnings it had received about Abedi and a second, "more in depth" inquiry, into how it missed the danger.

 

On the 22nd. November 2018, a Parliamentary report said that MI5 had acted "too slowly" in its dealings with Abedi. The committee's report noted:

 

"What we can say is that there were a number

of failings in the handling of Salman Abedi's case.

While it is impossible to say whether these would

have prevented the devastating attack on the

22nd. May, we have concluded that as a result of

the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it

were missed."

 

Investigation Into the Bombing

 

The property in Fallowfield where Abedi lived was raided on the 23rd. May. Armed police breached the house with a controlled explosion and searched it. Abedi's 23-year-old brother was arrested in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in south Manchester in relation to the attack.

 

Police carried out raids in two other areas of south Manchester and another address in the Whalley Range area. Three other men were arrested, and police initially spoke of a network supporting the bomber; however they later announced that Abedi had sourced all the bomb components himself, and that they now believed he had largely acted alone. On the 6th. July, police said that they believed others had been aware of Abedi's plans.

 

According to German police sources, Abedi transited through Düsseldorf Airport on his way home to Manchester from Istanbul four days before the bombing. French interior minister Gérard Collomb said that Abedi may have been to Syria, and had "proven" links with IS.

 

Abedi's younger brother and father were arrested by Libyan security forces on the 23rd. and 24th. May respectively. The brother was suspected of planning an attack in Libya, and was said to be in regular touch with Salman, and was aware of the plan to bomb the Manchester Arena, but not the date.

 

According to a Libyan official, the brothers spoke on the phone about 15 minutes before the attack was carried out. On the 1st. November 2017, the UK requested Libya to extradite the bomber's younger brother, Hashem Abedi to the UK in order to face trial for complicity in the murder of the 22 people killed in the explosion.

 

Photographs of the remains of the IED published by The New York Times indicated that it had comprised an explosive charge inside a lightweight metal container which was carried within a black vest or a blue Karrimor backpack.

 

Most of the fatalities occurred in a ring around the bomber. His torso was propelled by the blast through the doors to the arena, indicating that the explosive charge was held in the backpack and blew him forward on detonation. A small device thought to have possibly been a hand-held detonator was also found.

 

The bomb contained the explosive TATP, which had been used in previous bombings. According to Manchester police, the explosive device used by Abedi was the design of a skilled bomb-maker and had a back-up means of detonation. Police also said that Salman Abedi bought most of the bomb components himself, and that he was alone during much of the time before carrying out the Manchester bombing.

 

On the 28th. May, police released images showing Abedi on the night of the bombing, taken from CCTV footage. Further images showed Abedi walking around Manchester with a blue suitcase.

 

According to US intelligence sources, Abedi was identified by the bank card that he had with him and the identification was confirmed using facial recognition technology.

 

A public inquiry into the attack was launched in September 2020. The first of three reports to be produced was a 200-page report published on the 17th. June 2021. It found that:

 

"There were a number of missed opportunities

to alter the course of what happened that night,

and more should have been done by police and

private security guards to prevent the bombing."

 

News Leaks

 

Within hours of the attack, Abedi's name and other information that had been given confidentially to security services in the United States and France was leaked to the news media. This led to condemnation from Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

 

Following the publication of crime scene photographs of the backpack bomb used in the attack in the 24th. May edition of The New York Times, UK counterterrorism police chiefs said the release of the material was detrimental to the investigation.

 

On the 25th. May, Greater Manchester Police said that it had stopped sharing information on the attack with the US intelligence services. Theresa May said she would make clear to President Trump that:

 

"Intelligence that has been

shared must be made secure."

 

Donald Trump described the leaks to the news media as "deeply troubling", and pledged to carry out a full investigation.

 

New York Times editor Dean Baquet declined to apologise for publishing the backpack bomb photographs, saying:

 

"We live in different press worlds.

The material was not classified at

the highest level."

 

On the 26th. May, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States government accepted responsibility for the leaks.

 

Links with the Muslim Brotherhood

 

According to a secret recording unveiled by the BBC, Mostafa Graf, the imam of the Didsbury Mosque where Salman Abedi and his family were regulars, made a call for armed jihad ten days before Abedi bought his concert ticket.

 

Following these revelations, the Manchester Police opened an investigation into the mosque and its imam, who also fought with a Libyan Islamist militia. Mostafa Graf is a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organisation founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi is known for having claimed:

 

"Suicide bombings are a duty".

 

Haras Rafiq, head of the Quilliam think tank, told The Guardian that the Muslim Brotherhood runs the Didsbury Mosque.

 

The Didsbury Mosque is controlled by The Islamic Centre (Manchester), an English association headed by Dr. Haytham al-Khaffaf, who is also a director of the Human Relief Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood organisation blacklisted for terrorism by Israel. Between 2015 and 2016, al-Khaffaf's Human Relief Foundation received over £1.5 million from the Qatar Charity, which is also subject to US counterterrorism surveillance.

 

Trial and Sentencing of Hashem Abedi

 

On the 17th. July 2019, Salman Abedi's brother Hashem was charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion. He had been arrested in Libya and extradited to the UK.

 

His trial began on the 5th. February 2020. On the 17th. March, Hashem Abedi was found guilty on 22 charges of murder, on the grounds that he had helped his brother to source the materials used in the bombing, and had assisted with the manufacture of the explosives which were used in the attack.

 

On the 20th. August, Hashem Abedi was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 55 years. The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, said that sentencing rules prevented him from imposing a whole life order as Abedi had been 20 years old at the time of the offence. The minimum age for a whole life order is 21 years old. Abedi's 55-year minimum term is the longest minimum term ever imposed by a British court.

 

Ismail Abedi

 

In October 2021 it was reported that Salman Abedi's older brother Ismail had left the UK despite being summonsed by Sir John Saunders to testify before the public inquiry into the bombing. Saunders had refused Ismail Abedi's request for immunity from prosecution while testifying.

 

Ariana Grande

 

Ariana Grande posted on Twitter:

 

"Broken. from the bottom of my

heart, i am so so sorry. i don't

have words."

 

The tweet briefly became the most-liked tweet in history. Grande suspended her tour and flew back to her mother's home in Florida.

 

On the 9th. July 2017, a performance to benefit the Manchester bombing victims was held in New York City's The Cutting Room, called "Break Free: United for Manchester", with Broadway theatre and television performers interpreting Ariana Grande songs.

 

On the 4th. June, Ariana Grande hosted a benefit concert in Manchester, entitled "One Love Manchester" at Old Trafford Cricket Ground that was broadcast live on television, radio and social media.

 

At the concert, Grande performed along with several other high-profile artists. Free tickets were offered to those who had attended the show on the 22nd. May. The benefit concert and associated Red Cross fund raised £10 million for victims of the attack, and £17 million by August. New York's Vulture section ranked the event as the No. 1 concert of 2017.

 

The Kerslake Report

 

On the 27th. March 2018, a report by Bob Kerslake named the "Kerslake Report" was published. The report was an independent review into the preparedness for, and emergency response to, the Manchester Arena attack on the 22nd. May 2017.

 

In the report, Kerslake "largely praised" the Greater Manchester Police and British Transport Police, and noted that it was "fortuitous" that the North West Ambulance Service was unaware of the declaration of Operation Plato, a protocol under which all responders should have withdrawn from the arena in case of an active killer on the premises.

 

However, it found that the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service was "brought to a point of paralysis" as their response was delayed for two hours due to poor communication between the firefighters' liaison officer and the police force.

 

The report was critical of Vodafone for the "catastrophic failure" of an emergency helpline hosted on a platform provided by Content Guru, saying that delays in getting information caused "significant stress and upset" to families.

 

It also expressed criticism of some news media, saying:

 

"To have experienced such intrusive and

overbearing behaviour at a time of such

enormous vulnerability seemed to us to

be completely and utterly unacceptable".

 

However, it was also noted that:

 

"We recognise that this was some, but by

no means all of the media, and that the

media also have a positive and important

role to play."

 

Memorial to the Bombing

 

The victims of the bombing are commemorated by The Glade of Light, a garden memorial located in Manchester city centre near Manchester Cathedral. The memorial opened to the public in January 2022.

 

The memorial was vandalised on the 9th. February 2022, causing £10,000 of damage. A 24-year-old man admitted to the offence in April and will be sentenced at a later date.

 

The 2018 Manchester Terror Attack

 

The Manchester Arena is next to Victoria Station, and in fact partly above it. Victoria Station witnessed a subsequent terror attack on the 31st. December 2018 at 20.52.

 

Mahdi Mohamud, a 25 year old man from Somalia stabbed three people in a knife attack at the station. He appears to have acted alone.

 

Mohamud shouted "Allah!" and "Long live the Caliphate!" during the attack, and "Allahu Akbar" after being arrested. A witness alleged that during the attack he also shouted a slogan criticising Western governments. BBC producer Sam Clack reported that he heard Mohamud saying:

 

"As long as you keep bombing other

countries this sort of s--- is going to

keep happening,"

 

Mohamud had lived in England for about 10 years, and resided in Manchester's Cheetham neighbourhood with his parents and siblings.

 

Two of the three victims, a couple in their 50's who had come into town to celebrate the New Year, were hospitalised with serious injuries. The third victim was a British Transport Police officer who received a stab wound to his shoulder.

 

Despite suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Mohamud was convicted of a terror offence and the attempted murder of three people, due to his possession of significant amounts of extremist material and the attack's extensive planning. He pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted murder and a terror offence.

 

The perpetrator, who was initially detained under the Mental Health Act, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a high-security psychiatric hospital.

 

The Second Inquiry into the Arena Bombing

 

On the 3rd. November 2022, inquiry chair Sir John Saunders issued a second report into the atrocity. Within the 884 pages he said that the emergency services failed to communicate properly in response to the incident, stemming from 'failures to prepare.'

 

He concluded that "Failing" emergency services thought a terror attack "could never happen" before the Manchester Arena bombing.

 

Sir John Saunders said the majority of those who died were so badly injured they could not have survived. However, it is believed that two of the 22 fatalities could have recovered if they had received better medical care.

 

Pointing the finger at leaders of the police, fire and ambulance services, he said:

 

“On the night of the attack, multi‐agency

communication between the three

emergency services was non‐existent.

That failure played a major part in what

went wrong.”

 

He added:

 

“There had been failures to prepare. There

had been inadequacies in training.

Well-established principles had not been

ingrained in practice.

Why was that? Partly it was because, despite

the fact that the threat of a terrorist attack was

at a very high level on the 22nd. May 2017, no

one really thought it could happen to them.”

 

The report also paid tribute to the “heroic” actions of ordinary members of the public who joined police and security and medical teams trying to save lives in a “war zone”.

 

Sir John said that two fatalities, John Atkinson, 28, and the youngest victim, eight year old Saffie-Rose Roussos, did have a chance of survival. Sir John said:

 

“I have concluded that one of those who

died, John Atkinson would probably have

survived had the emergency response

been better.”

 

He added:

 

“In the case of Saffie Rose Roussos, I have

concluded that there was a remote possibility

that she could have been saved if the rescue

operation had been conducted differently.”

 

The inquiry heard that only three paramedics went into the City Room after the attack. Crews from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service took more than two hours to attend the Arena.

 

Sir John added:

 

“GMP (Greater Manchester Police) did not

lead the response in accordance with the

guidance that it had been given or parts of

its own plans.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service

(GMFRS) failed to turn up at the scene at a

time when they could provide the greatest

assistance.

North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) failed

to send sufficient paramedics into the City

Room.

NWAS did not use available stretchers to

remove casualties in a safe way, and did not

communicate their intentions sufficiently to

those who were in the City Room.”

 

Despite highlighting a series of failings, he said that:

 

"There were some parts of the emergency

response that worked well, and that no doubt

lives were saved”.

 

Paying tribute to those who helped the victims, he said:

 

“The heroism shown by very many people

that night is striking. I have seen the terrible

footage from the CCTV and body-worn video

cameras of the scene of devastation in the City

Room.

The description of that area as being like a

“warzone” was used by a number of witnesses.

That is an accurate description. To enter the

City Room or remain there to help victims

required great courage.”

 

Sir John added:

 

“At the centre of my Inquiry is the terrible loss

of twenty two lives. Each family and each person

at the Arena has a deeply personal story to tell

about the impact of the attack on them.

My report cannot change what has happened.

My intention is to uncover what went wrong and

find ways of improving practices so that no one

has to suffer such terrible pain and loss again.”

 

The report also stated that responsibility for the deaths lies with suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, and his brother Hashem, 25, who is serving life behind bars for his part in the plot.

 

The inquiry found that the brothers had “planned to cause as much harm to as many people as they could" when Abedi exploded his home made device.

 

02/10/2021. Ladies European Tour 2021. Estrella Damm Ladies Open Presented by Catalunya, Club de Golf Terramar, Sitges, Spain. October 1-3 2021. Ellie Givens of England during the second round. Credit: Tristan Jones/LET

Given to my friend, Riet, to cheer her up. ATC with hand-made Japanese paper doll.

 

Materials: Background (Japanese design print); kimono and obi (yuzen washi); hair decor (nail art).

YORK, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 04: during the West Riding County FA Development West League match between i2i Albion and i2i County at Haxby Road on November 4th 2022 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by Matthew Appleby)

Green Wood Cemetery / Brooklyn, NY

given to First Student: Wallkill in September 2016

Information given at MAKS 2013:

 

SU-27LL Flying Test-Bed / In-flight Simulator with variable-in-flight dynamics

 

Applications:

•Future aircraft characteristics assessment and FCS research

•In-flight simulation and assessment of aircraft

•Development of flight safety enhancing systems

•Elaboration of adaptive flight control laws for perspective flying vehicles

 

Experimental equipment:

•Experimental digital FBW

•Autothrottle

•Experimental hand controllers

•Reprogrammable-in-flight HDD/HUD

•SNS

•Telemetry system

 

(photo 233-1)

Given a choice of any ZX this is the model I would choose.

For some reason basic spec cars seem to be more common in much of Europe than they are in the UK.

Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala.

© Todos los derechos reservados

Alfredo Zablah

© All rights reserved

Alfredo Zablah

Given that the Nobel prize giving ceremony and all the sparkle and glitter associated with it has had to be postponed, they have tried to lift spirits by lighting up some of the city’s buildings. I was with some lovely photographers doing a small tour of these, of course I didn’t really photograph the main event. Instead I looked around for something a little different.

This looks to be given the limits of the instamatic format and a faded print onto textured paper KPW481E, the former Eastern Counties Bristol Eastern Coach Works Lodekka FLF6G which I’ve previously uploaded a rear end view of in Glasgow’s East End. Here it is in the city centre, actually on what is now Killermont Street but was then pending development a layover area for Scottish Bus Group Vehicles. Dundas Street bus station can be seen on the other side of Parliamentary Road. In the distance the cream building on the corner of North Hanover Street and Cathedral Street is still there, if currently vacant.

 

Ron Doig image © Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust

  

Given the right conditions of water, sunlight and nutrients, cyanobacteria can multiply rapidly and form extensive “blooms.” Some species of cyanobacteria also have the ability to produce toxins that can affect the central nervous system, the liver, and other systems. When these species bloom and produce toxins, they create large areas of harmful algal blooms.

Dr. Seegers is part of a multi-agency effort which includes NASA, EPA, NOAA, and the USGS. The Cyanobacteria Assessment Network (CyAN) Project uses historic and current satellite data to detect algal blooms in U.S. freshwater systems.

 

earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/user-resources/who-uses-nasa-ear...

   

Caption: Dr. Bridget Seegers studying algal blooms and water quality

Image credit: Seegers, NASA/GSFC

[given]

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

 

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I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 50.905+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.

  

***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Thursday 30th October 2025

  

CREATIVE RF gty.im/2243392493 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 7,340th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifteenmetres at 13:34pm on Monday 15th May 2023 off Pacific Rim Highway 4 and Airport Road on the sandy shoreline of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve at Long Beach in Tofino, British Columbia.

  

Here we see a Sitka Spruce tree (Picea Sitchensis) also known as the Tideland Spruce or Western Spruce.

  

Nikon D850 Single-lens reflex digital camera F Mount with FX CMOS 35.9mm x 23.9mm Image sensor 46.89 Million total pixels Focal length: 24mm Shutter speed: 1/80s (Mechanical shutter) Aperture f/13.0 iso640 Handheld with Nikkor VR Vibration Reduction enabled Image area Full Frame FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L 45.4Million pixels (8256 x 5504) 14 Bit uncompressed AF-C Priority Selection: Release Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1, A1.00, M0.25 (5160k) Colour space: Adobe RGB Picture control: (A) Auto (Sharpening +1.00/Clarity +1.00)

  

Nikkor AFS-24-120mm F4 VR. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup. Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon EN-EL15a battery.

   

LATITUDE: N 49d 4m 17.90s

LONGITUDE: W 125d 45m 33.70s

ALTITUDE: 15.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 91.8MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 43.60MB

      

PROCESSING POWER:

 

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.21 (8/12/2022) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (16/01/20) LF 1.00 Nikon Codec Full version 1.31.2 (09/11/2021)

 

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with Windows 10 Home edition AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. My Passport USB 3.0 2TB portable desktop hard drive. Nikon NX STUDIO 64bit Version 1.2.2 (08/12/2022). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.16.0 (08/12/2022). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

Sandal Castle is a ruined medieval castle in Sandal Magna, a suburb of the city of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, overlooking the River Calder. It was the site of royal intrigue and the setting for a scene in one of William Shakespeare's plays.

 

History

 

The Warennes

 

William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey (1081–1138) was granted the Sandal estates in 1107. The 2nd earl built the first Sandal Castle of timber. He supported Robert Curthose against Henry I and was banished from the kingdom for two years. Later he was given the Wakefield manor. William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey (1119–1148) spent little time at Sandal, having taken crusading vows and joined the Second Crusade. He had one daughter, Isabel de Warenne (1137–1199), who married William of Blois, son of King Stephen, who became the 4th earl. He died in 1159, leaving no children. Isabel, his widow, next married Hamelin (1129–1202), the 5th earl. He was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and assumed the Warrene name on his marriage in 1164. Hamelin is thought to have built the early Norman stone fortifications at Conisbrough Castle and also begun to replace the wooden fortifications at Sandal with stone.

 

William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey (1166–1240) married Maud Marshal in 1225. He was loyal to his cousin, King John and is one of the four nobles whose name appears in the Magna Carta for John. On King John's death in 1216 he supported Henry III. Maud de Warenne, William's widow, held the Wakefield Manor from 1240 until their son John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey (1231–1304) came of age in 1252. John married Alice de Lusignan in 1247. In 1296 the 6th Earl was appointed warden for Scotland by Edward I and in 1299, the Earl and his royal master were triumphant over the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk.

 

William de Warrene (1256–1286) was killed at a tournament in Croydon pre-deceasing his father. His son John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey (1286–1347) was born in the year of his death. John married Joan of Bar but lived adulterously with Maud de Nereford from a village near Castle Acre in Norfolk. In 1347, the 7th Earl died. His sons John and Thomas became Knights Hospitaller in the Holy Land, predeceasing their mother. The lands passed to Edward III. The Warennes had castles at Lewes in Sussex and Reigate in Surrey, Castle Acre Castle in Norfolk and Conisbrough in Yorkshire.

 

The Dukes of York

 

In 1347, Edward III granted Sandal to his fifth son Edmund of Langley who was six years old at the time. His elder brother John of Gaunt held Pontefract and Knaresborough Castles, Edmund was granted Wark Castle near Coldstream in the Scottish Borders, and in 1377 Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire which was to become his home, and for the next 75 years the family seems to have spent little time at Sandal, leaving it to the management of constables or stewards.

 

In 1385 Edmund was made Duke of York as a reward for his support for his nephew, Richard II of England. He was succeeded by his son, also Edward who campaigned in Ireland and died at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Edward was succeeded by his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York.

 

The Battle of Wakefield

 

Early in 1460, during the Wars of the Roses, Richard Plantagenet made a bid for the throne. He was initially not well-received, but an Act of Accord made in October 1460 recognised him as heir to the throne and named him Protector of the Realm. In December Richard went to Sandal Castle, either to consolidate his position or to counter Lancastrian dissent. He had an army of 3,000–8,000 men but on 30 December in the Battle of Wakefield, he was outnumbered and outmaneuvered by Queen Margaret's army, coming from nearby Pontefract. Richard suffered a crushing defeat and both he and his younger son Edmund, Earl of Rutland were killed (although only two months later Richard's eldest son Edward became king).

 

Richard III

 

The castle's last brush with royalty came in 1483 when Richard's eighth son (and twelfth child) Richard III chose it as a northern base and ordered significant investments. This hope was short lived however as Richard was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. After this the castle was maintained a little, but gradually declined, with the building of Wakefield Prison in the 1590s leaving it even less useful.

 

The English Civil War

 

During the English Civil War Sandal Castle was Royalist, although its neglected state left it out of the major conflicts. In 1645 however it was besieged at least three times by Parliamentarian troops. Butler recounts: Having been assured that they would receive a safe passage to Welbeck House in north Nottinghamshire they surrendered the castle at 10 o'clock on 1 October 1645. The garrison was then 10 officers and 90 men with two of the men called "seniors" implying that they were professional soldiers rather than just non-commissioned officers. They also surrendered 100 muskets, 50 pikes, 20 halberds, 150 swords and two barrels of gunpowder: no pieces of artillery are mentioned.

 

As a result of this capitulation, only Bolton Castle in Wensleydale and Skipton Castle remained in Royalist hands in Yorkshire, but Sandal "was the most resolute of all the three northern garrisons" and its fall caused great rejoicing among the parliamentarian forces. By the siege's end, it was a ruin. The following year, Parliament ordered that it be made untenable.

 

The castle

 

The motte at Sandal Castle

 

The castles built by William the Conqueror's followers were self-sufficient strongholds, some of which were tax-gathering points, some controlled the larger towns, river crossings or passes through hills. Two castles were built near Wakefield, one at Lowe Hill on the north bank of the Calder and Sandal on the south bank. The first castles were probably started and completed in the early 12th century by William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey after he had been granted the manor of Wakefield by Henry I.

 

Sandal and Lowe Hill were motte-and-bailey earthwork castles with wooden towers on the mound and baileys with timber palisades and deep ditches. Sandal is built on a natural sandstone ridge, the Oaks Rock. The motte was raised to 10 metres (33 ft) with the 7 metres (23 ft) deep moat surrounding it. Only Sandal survived and during the 13th century the keep, curtain wall and other buildings were rebuilt in stone, probably started by either the sixth or seventh Earls Warenne.[Timber motte and bailey castles were often converted into stone if they were in use for long periods; Sandal is a particularly good example of this.

 

The stone keep was circular with four towers each four storeys high; two of them close together formed a gatehouse, and the east tower contained a well, 37 metres (121 ft) deep. The double-walled keep would have had guardrooms, storerooms and servants' quarters on the ground floor, the main hall above and private apartments on the second floor. The tower rooms had garderobes, (lavatories) that discharged on the outer walls of the keep. The curtain wall was 6 metres (20 ft) high with a wall walk along its length, it enclosed the bailey and crossed the moat twice to reach the keep.

 

The barbican at Sandal was inside the bailey; it was a three-storey tower with a moat opposite two drum towers at the entrance to the keep, all of which were constructed in the early 1270s. The barbican with its own gate and portcullis added an extra line of defence between the main entrance gate and the keep. Attackers entering the barbican had to make a right-angled turn to enter the keep, which was protected by a drawbridge between the drum towers. A stairway from the barbican led to a sally port.

 

The bailey lay to the south-east of the keep with the main gatehouse on the north-east side. It was crescent shaped, about 71 metres (233 ft) long and 52 metres (171 ft) wide. Inside the bailey there was a 12 metres (39 ft) deep well and two privy shafts, one of which is 8 metres (26 ft) deep.

 

The ruins

 

The ruins were a source of stone for local building and became a place for locals to relax. They were depicted in the foreground of a drawing of Wakefield from the south by Samuel Buck in 1719 or 1722, and in 1753 an engraving was published of an Elizabethan survey drawing.

 

The ruins were first excavated by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1893. A more detailed project began in the summer of 1964 and was a partnership between Wakefield Corporation, Wakefield Historical Society and the University of Leeds. This project started as an experiment in adult education, but with the help of over a hundred local volunteers it grew into a complete and rigorous excavation that continued for nine years. Whilst excavating the bailey, archaeologists found remains of flint tools suggesting a Mesolithic encampment was there in about 5,000 BC.

 

In 2003, a wooden walkway was provided to allow access to the summit of the motte without causing erosion: it was subsequently closed as unsafe. A visitor centre was constructed about 110 yards (100 m) from the castle. There have been historical re-enactments and "living history" days, including commemoration of the Battle of Wakefield and the deaths of Richard Duke of York and his son Edmund. In February 2015 Wakefield Council announced that due to budget constraints they were considering plans to either close the visitor centre or reduce its opening hours. The centre has since closed.

 

The castle is a Scheduled Monument, which means it is a "nationally important" historic building and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change. It is also a Grade II* listed building.

Though not my usual kind of photography (wildlife, wildflowers, and so on), the roses I treated myself to have given me lots of pleasure with my camera.

YORK, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 04: during the West Riding County FA Development West League match between i2i Albion and i2i County at Haxby Road on November 4th 2022 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by Matthew Appleby)

On any given day during the warmer months, one can be treated to the vast array of dragonfly and damselfly species, and when looking closely, the distinct patterns and colors are prominently displayed. Being so small in stature and often on the go from plant to plant, or in wide circles over the body of water, photographing them with a high level sharpness is not that easy, but with patience and a sense of their flight and landing habits, successful shots are not impossible. In this particular instance (series of 5 photos) a very large, pregnant female dragonfly was busy flying from one area of the pond to another, landing often to explore, and on those occasions in which the landing site was satisfactory, it would excrete the stream of eggs (visible in the 4th picture of the series), securing it under any foliage that served its purpose. WHAT A TRULY AMAZING SIGHT IT WAS!!!

Pond life with creatures of the animal kingdom or plants, offer so much beauty for one to appreciate. Although not on a grand scale, the activity within the simple setting is truly phenomenal. When we visit such landscape to observe and/or photograph, the endless wealth of subjects is truly astonishing--just stop and really look, and you would marvel at the things you will see.

This garden, nestled amongst hills and brooks, is like the proverbial Garden of Eden. Incorporating the natural landscape and creating a truly enchanting garden around it makes this place a MUST VISIT site for anyone with a sense of appreciation for nature in a quiet way. Nothing pretentious, but so much can be seen and learned from each outing. The bucolic setting will put your heart and soul at ease, and quickly remove the stress of everyday life—at least, while you are there.

The vast collection of trees and plants is incredible, and the landscape garden planning and design is of superb presentation and care. Wildlife such as birds, insects, amphibians and reptiles can be seen regularly and the pure air of life emanates throughout this lovely terrain. The brooks and ponds are rich with activity and whether you enjoy photography or not, just being there is reward enough.

Situated in Far Hills of Somerset County of New Jersey, this hidden gem is worth the trip. Upon your first view, you will know instantly that this is a special garden, unique unto itself . . .

 

YORK, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 04: during an i2i Soccer Academy Training Session at Haxby Road on October 4th 2022 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by Matthew Appleby)

Given myself an alphabet soup game. Two new photos and another two from my photostream or archives, when possible.

 

This was the queue for the outdoor swimming pool in Etampes. I'm sure as it was also taken quite late in the afternoon, so whether or not these people ever got in, is a mystery! Taken in September 2011.

 

Thank you for your favourites. :O)

26/05/2021, Great Bitter Lake, Suez Canal, Egypt.

 

The detained VLCS remains at anchor in this position, today, after running aground and blocking the Southern end of the canal on 23/03/2021.

Vessel was towed free on 29/03/2021.

 

The third vessel delivered, of a Class of 11 ships, all built by Imabari.

 

Keel laid on 25/12/2015, launched on 09/05/2018, and completed on 25/09/2018, by Imabari Zosen, Marugame, Japan (1833)

217,612 g.t., 199,489 dwt., and 20,388 teu, as:

'Ever Given'.

 

Photos with the permission of Martin Dobak, as he sailed northbound through the canal, on the 'Majestic Maersk'.

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

 

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I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 46.114+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.

  

***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Monday 27th June 2023

  

CREATIVE RF gty.im/1499571707 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 6,000th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Thirteen metres at 20:43pm on Friday 26th May 2023 around sunset (Sunset was at 20.59pm), off Qwuc Chus Lane and Patricia Bay Highway 17 on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in Canada.

  

Nikon D850 Single-lens reflex digital camera F Mount with FX CMOS 35.9mm x 23.9mm Image sensor 46.89 Million total pixels Focal length 260mm Shutter speed: 1/30s (Mechanical shutter) Aperture f/13.0 iso64 Tamron Vibration Control set to position 1 Image area Full Frame FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L 45.4Million pixels (8256 x 5504) 14 Bit uncompressed AF-C Priority Selection: Release Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1, A1.00, M0.25 (4380k) Colour space: Adobe RGB Picture control: (SD) Standard (Sharpening +3.00/Clarity +1.00)

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Manfrotto MT057C3-G Carbon fiber Geared tripod 3 sections. Neewer 9750 Gimbal tripod head with Arca Swiss standard quick release plate. Jessops Tripod bag. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup. Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon EN-EL15a battery.

   

LATITUDE: N 48d 35m 23.10s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 23m 59.40s

ALTITUDE: 13.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 90.3MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 51.40MB

      

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.21 (8/12/2022) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (16/01/20) LF 1.00 Nikon Codec Full version 1.31.2 (09/11/2021)

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with Windows 10 Home edition AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. My Passport USB 3.0 2TB portable desktop hard drive. Nikon NX STUDIO 64bit Version 1.2.2 (08/12/2022). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.16.0 (08/12/2022). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

  

As some of you may already know, I recently was given the opportunity to shoot for the NEON iCON... aka; RiFF RAFF -One of the hottest and most successful celebrities and rappers out there right now. I first shot for RiFF RAFF ViP status in Seattle, at Showbox... and I knew I needed to keep going. I then traveled 600 miles to the Knitting Factory, in Spokane, WA, absolutely determined to make a business connection with the man himself, in person.

 

Meeting the NEON PYTHON was a trip -This dude is real as fuck, sported a $50K NEFF chain around his neck when I met him, and shakes the floor at a solid 250 LBS -He is currently being trained by Hulk Hogan for the WWE. I'm really stoked I had the opportunity to meet him, this guy has been a huge inspiration to me. I shot the event sporting my NEON iCON T and some fresh Jordan Oreo 6's to match it -Had to let Jody know I was a part of NEON NATiON!

 

For this I used nothing but the Contax 645 and Fujifilm 800Z. After some consultation with the world renound wedding photographer and author of "Film Is Not Dead", Jonathan Canlas, I decided his Lab was the one for the job, and I sent my negatives to The FIND Lab for developing and scanning. Normally I use a Fuji Frontier SP-3000 scanner, however I needed to grab extra shadow detail so I used a Kodak Noritsu scanner for this batch. I gave my film as much light as I could while stopping some motion, and camped at f/2 on the 80mm and stayed between 1/125th and 1/60th shutter. I pushed the film +3 stops, to 6400 ASA. In the future when I shoot for JODY HiGHROLLER, I will be using CineStill 800T paired with Ilford HP5 films, and pushing one stop, or not at all. Fuji 800Z is a very light-hungry film, and I was lucky to get useable images from shooting with it. This particular set of images had to be converted to Black and White, due to under-exposure from dim Tungsten lighting.

 

Once a Media Outlet is decided on, these images will be released to Press! I'm definitely going after WORLDSTAR HIPHOP for these ones! In the meantime I have gotten the OK to leak these on my social media.

 

As of a few days ago, RiFF RAFF's Social Media Manager and one of his merch designers, informed me they would love to take some of my Black and White images, and take out the background and colorize them for a "Pop Art" type look, to be pressed on a T shirt design. This would also mean my work woud be promoted through www.jodyhighroller.com and on his social media platforms! Needless to say, I am effing stoked!

 

As of lately, getting work has been tough. The cost of film, darkroom fees, camera accessories, and running this business is only always going up -any support or follows from fans is greatly appreciated, my links can be found below:

 

---->>> Facebook | Blog Insta: @Ricky.Dekker <<<----

Whyalla. Population 21,200.

Hummock Hill was sighted and named by Matthew Flinders in 1802 and soon after given French names by Captain Baudin. The first pastoral runs were taken out here in the 1850s as it had the Middle Back ranges, coastal access and Port Augusta not too far distant. One of the early pastoralists was James Patterson who took out the Iron Knob leasehold of over 160 square miles in 1854 near Iron Knob. To the north and west of his leasehold was that of James Loudon who took out Caroona station in 1862. Other leaseholds in the region of Whyalla were Point Lowly, Pandurra and Middleback. In the early 1870s Loudon sold Caroona to Sir Samuel Davenport and Sir John Morphett and it was Davenport, with his interest in minerals and mining, who sent the first ore samples to England in 1878 for analysis. This resulted in a mining lease taken out in 1880 by Ernest Siekman. The lease lapsed as he did not pay the annual rental. BHP took out nine mining leases in 1896 and the future of iron Knob and the future Whyalla began. BHP began taking iron ore for smelting to Port Augusta in 1899 which took bullock drays two days. The Hundred of Randell which covered this area was declared in 1895 as interest in the ore deposits increased.

 

In 1896 the government released land fronting Spencers Gulf for lease. One of the first to take up land where Whyalla stands was Humphrey Cowled who leased 30,000 acres on the gulf which he called Nonowie. The town of Hummock Hill emerged in 1900 after BHP developed their ore leases. The ore was used for flux in the Port Pirie smelter and it was shipped across Spencers Gulf. Most of the early settler families at Hummock Hill also came by ship across the gulf from Port Pirie. These families remained the backbone of the Whyalla population until World War Two. In 1900 BHP proposed to the government of SA to enact a bill that would allow them to build a tramway from Iron Knob to Hummock Hill on the coast with a permanent leasehold of the route. Port Augusta Council opposed this as they wanted the tramway built to Port Augusta and its already existing port. There was some logic in this opposition as a tramway to Port Augusta would be 46 miles in length whereas the tramway to Hummock Hill was about 35 miles, not a significantly shorter distance. The government enacted legislation for a BHP tramway to Hummock Hill in 1901 and BHP had developed a small jetty and port by 1903. At the same time the town of Hummock Hill emerged partly on BHP leasehold land. By 1905 the settlement had its first school, a general store and a tin Institute in which the school was conducted. Church services were also held in the hall. In 1903 the community was pleased when Mr Delprat, the general manager of the Broken Hill mine visited Hummock Hill and Iron Knob. The first hotel opened in 1905 on the site that later became the Whyalla Hotel 20 or so years later. The beer was shipped to the hotel from Port Pirie. The isolation of Hummock Hill was reduced when a telephone service began in 1911. Gradually stone houses replaced early tin and timber houses and the town took shape. The government officially surveyed and changed the name of the town to Whyalla in 1914 which means “sound of the sea” in a local Aboriginal language. The new solid Institute was opened in 1920 by Mr Delprat the BHP manager in Broken Hill. At the time Whyalla had a population of around 1,000 people with sporting clubs, RSL, banks, and commercial enterprises. Water was shipped from Port Pirie when necessary. BHP established a dairy to provide milk for the residents and a small desalination plant was built to provide additional fresh water. The impressive red ironstone buildings, often in the Art Deco style were erected in the late 1930s or early 1940s as the city’s industrial base expanded to steel making and ship building. The iron stone Whyalla Hotel opened in 1933. It was enlarged in 1940. This was a company town run by BHP with the exception of the Post Office, the School and the Police Station run by the government and the commercial enterprises of the town. BHP was a paternalistic employer and during the Depression of the 1930s as work slowed BHP found other jobs for married male employees such as re grading the tramway from Iron Knob etc.

During World War One Mr Delprat had suggested a steel furnace and steel works in Whyalla but this did not happen. The steel industry in Australia began with a small furnace and plant at Lithgow in the Blue Mountains in 1901. This plant was superseded by the bigger steel works in Newcastle in 1915 and Whyalla jetty was then expanded to ship iron ore direct to Newcastle. The third steel plant in Australia was established at Port Kembla (Wollongong) in 1928 and Iron Knob ore was also shipped there. With the rise of Hitler and Third Reich in Europe in 1933 and the ominous threat of world war Australia began to be concerned about its future as it was clear we were no longer isolated from the rest of the world. In 1937 the SA government passed legislation for the Morgan to Whyalla Murray River water pipeline to ensure water reliability for Whyalla and this was an essential for the first production of steel by BHP. The 1937 act set aside 1,000 acres for BHP to establish the plant and adjacent harbour. Progress was not hasty and the furnace and harbour began in 1939. After the outbreak of World War Two work progressed quickly. The first steel was produced in 1941 and called pig iron. Port Kembla also produced pig iron or steel and its export to Japan in 1938 led to the Attorney General Robert Menzies being called Pig Iron Bob by striking wharf unionists. The union slogan at the time was “No scrap for the Jap.” At that time Japan was fighting the Sino-Japanese War and needed more steel. The industrial dispute at Port Kembla ended in January 1939 when the waterside workers loaded the ships at Port Kembla. In 1940 the Royal Australia Navy asked BHP if they could build ships in Whyalla and this became urgent with the war and work began in 1940 on the hulls of several ships before the steel blast furnace was completed. The town grew rapidly with an influx of new workers and the construction of the hospital, an abattoirs, the Spencer Hotel, and the establishment of a Whyalla newspaper in 1941/42. During the War the population rose from 1,350 in 1937 to 7,900 in 1944. During most of World War Two BHP employed around 2,500 men and women with a peak of 2,750 employees in 1941. During the War BHP also established an ammunitions annex to produce shells for war arms. In a couple of years Whyalla produced 748,000 shell cases. The Combined Unions Council negotiated with BHP for workers’ wages and conditions. The newly employed women to offset the war time labour shortage were employed in the war effort in the shell annex, the tool room and in ship building. The women received 90% of the men’s wages for the same job.

The first ship was launched in 1941 and named the HMAS Whyalla (650 tonnes) which is now part of the Information Centre and Maritime Museum. It was one of four corvettes made in Whyalla for the Royal Australia Navy and they mainly worked as minesweepers and surveillance. During and after World War Two Whyalla built 36 ships for the Australian Navy, four for Indian navy and 20 for the British Admiralty. After the War most of the ships built in Whyalla shipyards were mainly cargo and iron ore carriers. A total of 63 ships, one oil rig and two barges were built in Whyalla by 1978 when shipbuilding was closed down. Most of the corvettes manufactured in Whyalla had South Australian town names- Whyalla, Gawler and Pirie. Whyalla also built the Kalgoorlie corvette for the Royal Navy. Other SA named corvettes built interstate were the Kapunda, the Glenelg and the Wallaroo. After the war BHP built commercial ships and eventually in 1958 they decided to build an integrated steel works in Whyalla (completed 1965) to process the ore into steel. Railway lines and ships were among the steel products produced.

As a shipbuilding site and producer of ammunition shells Whyalla needed special consideration and defence during World War Two. Defence installations were erected on Hummock Hill during the Second World War (1942) as Whyalla was a potential Japanese bombing target. Four anti-aircraft guns were on the ready at Hummock Hill. Other defence installations were built south of Cowell at Port Gibbon to forewarn of a Japanese attack. Complacency about war threats was overturned when German shipping mines were discovered in Spencers Gulf in 1940 designed to impede BHP ore carriers to Newcastle and Wollongong. Across the Gulf Port Pirie produced half of Britain’s lead so it too needed special protection. A survey recommended special defences for both Iron Triangle cities but only Whyalla got special protection. As the threat of Japan increased anti-aircraft guns were sent to Hummock Hill and arrived on 4 February 1942. Ten days later (14 th February) Singapore fell to the Japanese and on 19th February 1942 Darwin was bombed and partially destroyed by the Japanese. The hummock Hill anti-aircraft guns were operational by 23rd March. One Royal Navy ship guarded the entrance to Whyalla for most of the War until 1944. Search lights were installed at Hummock Hill late in 1942. But no threat emerged during the War. Air raid practices were conducted by BHP from time to time warning people to take cover when the BHP siren sounded. Despite the practices and preparations no raid occurred but the need for precaution was not unfounded. Three of BHP’s merchant ships were sunk off the coast of NSW on their way to or from Whyalla with a total loss of 85 lives. By early 1944 Australia’s home defences were known to be out of danger but gunners at Whyalla had been withdrawn in August 1943 and their tasks taken over by civilian defence.

By 1943 Whyalla had a population of 5,000 people and people began to query the lack of local government as the city was run by BHP. Local government was instituted in 1944 with three elected and three BHP appointed councillors. 1944 was also the year the Morgan to Whyalla water pipeline was completed. In 1960 Whyalla became a city as it had around 14,000 residents. The Commission system of local government was ended in 1970 when locals could finally elect all councillors to their city. By 1976 Whyalla had 33,000 residents, the largest city outside of Adelaide but with the loss of shipbuilding in 1978 the city’s population declined to about 20,000. BHP sold their Whyalla works to OneSteel in 2000 which changed its name to Arrium. Sanjeev Gupta bought the insolvent Arrium steelworks in 2017 and has revitalised it albeit with recent difficulties. The Whyalla steel works are critical to the whole of Australia as steel is only made at Whyalla and Port Kembla. Whyalla is the only plant to make steel rail for all sorts of uses not just railways. In late 2024 Whyalla steel works employed 4,800 people directly and countless more indirectly in other firms. (Port Kembla employs around 3,000 people.) Perhaps the future of the city will be revitalised even more if the hydrogen hub proceeds. Whether that happens or not billions of dollars of investment are needed to move Whyalla steel works away from coal fired furnaces to gas or hydrogen fired furnaces. On the way to Hummock Hill lookout in Gay St. we pass the Whyalla Institute with a classical façade with the date as 1920. This was also the site of the first timber Institute opened in February 1905. The first Whyalla School opened in this Institute in April 1905.The current port of Whyalla exports iron ore and steel mainly. Port Bonython 16 kms north of Whyalla mainly exports crude oil and liquid gas from South Australia’s Cooper basin.

Some historic buildings in Whyalla.

Starting at the corner of Horwood Street and Darling Terrace.

1. On the corner is the Art Deco Courthouse and next to it in Darling St the original 1930s neo Georgian style Courthouse with two roof ventilators on it. The newer part was built in 1944 and the single storey part was built around 1930.

2. Opposite in Darling St is the former Whyalla Hotel with massive scale opened in 1933 by the SA Brewing company. Enlarged in 1940. Now the Whyalla Playford Apartments.

3. At the next corner turn right into Forsyth St. On the corner is the red iron stone and cement rendered brick Spencer Hotel with a clock tower. Look carefully at the frieze below the parapet roof line as they have indented sculptures of the steelworks, the port and the HMAS Whyalla corvette etc. The Hotel Spencer was completed in 1939 so the frieze with the Whyalla corvette was made a bit later

4. Next on the left is Lutine House in red ironstone with pilasters and a classical façade. This became chambers for local lawyers but it began life as a bank. Built around 1940.

5. On the next corner left is the Bay View Hotel also built in Art Deco style but in brick in 1941. Rounded corners, small tower.

6. Return to the Spencer Hotel and turn right into Darling Tce again and on next corner is the old Whyalla Primary School. Parts still date from its origin in 1915 but with many later additions. Opposite is the Catholic Convent (1942) and the Catholic High School – Samaritan College. St Theresa’s Catholic Church was here too. It was built in 1929 and became the Parish hall when the new church as built in 1941. About 3 minutes’ walk along Darling Tce you come to a roundabout

and the street ahead is Broadbent Tce. On the corner is the Whyalla High School. This impressive building was built in 1943 during the War and its central wing has an unusual wooden weather vane/vent. Return to the Main Street.

 

Mount Laura homestead dates from the origins of Hummock Hill. An earlier owner M Goode started building the homestead in 1910 completing the main homestead in 1922. The Nicholson family took out a 288 square mile leasehold in 1919 near Whyalla. After they purchased Mt Laura homestead in 1933 from the Goode family they

built the bungalow style stone front section of the homestead in 1933. The Nicholsons lived here until 1954 when the state government acquired it and the land around it for expansion of the city. The government donated the homestead to the National Trust in 1969. It is now their museum which includes the first BHP galvanised iron Office from 1914 which was located in Gray Street.

 

The new standard gauge line from Port Augusta to Whyalla opened on 6 October 1972. The Iron Triangle train service, using American Budd cars was initiated in 1975 by the Commonwealth Railways and Sth Australian Railways. The Budd car trains were made in Philadelphia and introduced by Commonwealth Railways in 1951 for the service between Woomera and Adelaide. The passenger service from Adelaide to Whyalla began in 1972 and the service closed in 1975. The 1972 to 1975 trains left Adelaide Monday to Friday at 12:30 pm and reached Whyalla at 1:15 am with an extra service Fridays leaving Adelaide at 7:35 am and reaching Whyalla at 3:25 pm. Another service operated from Adelaide on Sunday evenings from 4:45 pm reaching Whyalla at 11:15 pm. Trains departed Whyalla Monday to Friday at 10:20 am and on Sundays at 2:50 pm and on Fridays at 3:50 pm. There was also an overnight service on Fridays departing Whyalla at 10:15 pm and reaching Adelaide at 6:40 am. The train service to Whyalla re-opened eleven years later in April 1986 with refurbished American Budd rail cars with the service known as the Iron Triangle Limited. When the refurbished Budd car trains started in 1986 the timetable was more efficient and fast. Trains left Adelaide Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays at 5:30 pm arriving in Whyalla at 10:25 pm. Trains left Whyalla on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays at 5:00 am and reached Adelaide at 10:00 am. What a pity this train service ceased on 31 December 1990. Budd cars were taken out of service in 1990 after 39 years of service. Australian National rail closed down all passenger services in South Australia in 1990.

 

Given the continuous cold weather here in Europe (and photos showing that), quite a few people may long for the warm weather and super-friendly people of Flores.

My good friend Eugene, letting me know what he thinks of my camera!!

The Bartholdi Fountain

The return of Amphitrite to Place des Terreaux

In 2018, the full restoration of the fountain on Place des Terreaux, an iconic part of Lyon’s heritage, was completed. This extraordinary undertaking has given a second life to a masterpiece of lead sculpture created by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, more than 120 years after its inauguration. You can admire this work of art on Place des Terreaux.

  

Lyon, also spelled Lyons, capital of both the Rhône département and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes région, east-central France, set on a hilly site at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. It is the third largest city in France, after Paris and Marseille.

 

A Roman military colony called Lugdunum was founded there in 43 bce, and it subsequently became the capital of the Gauls. Lyon reached its peak of classical development in the 2nd century ce, during which time Christianity was introduced. In 177 the Christian community was persecuted by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and in 197 Lucius Septimius Severus decimated Lyon. In 1032 Lyon was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, but the real power lay with the city’s archbishops, whose influence caused important ecumenical councils to be held there in 1245 and again in 1274. Lyon was annexed to the kingdom of France in 1312.

The Renaissance ushered in a period of economic prosperity and intellectual brilliance. The establishment, in 1464, of commercial fairs together with the arrival in the city of Italian merchant bankers enabled Lyon to flourish. By the 17th century it was the silk-manufacturing capital of Europe. Printing was introduced as early as 1473, and Lyon soon became one of the most active printing centres in Europe.

 

The French Revolution brought uneasy times. The collapse of the domestic market and the closing of foreign markets brought a slump in the silk industry, and in 1793 the city was besieged by republican forces of the Montagnards. In the 19th century prosperity returned, bringing about considerable industrial expansion. Urban development began only in the 1950s, after the periods of stagnation and depression between 1920 and the end of World War II.

Lyon is spread over a narrow peninsula between the Rhône and Saône rivers and on their opposite banks. A zone of factory and residential suburbs encircles the city. On the right bank of the Saône, Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) remains as one of the finest surviving architectural complexes of the Renaissance era. The peninsula is now the heart of the business district. The east bank of the Rhône is divided between a wealthy area, the Brotteaux, and a district with factories and workers’ houses extending east toward the fringing communities of Villeurbanne and Bron. To the south, along the Rhône, Feyzin and Saint-Fons constitute one of the largest oil-refining complexes in France.

 

www.britannica.com/place/Lyon-France