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OSAN AIR BASE, South Kora (Aug. 12, 2020) - U-2 “Dragon Lady” maintainers perform a pre-flight inspection before a 5th Reconnaissance Squadron U-2 pilot takes off at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, August 12, 2020. The U-2 is unique in that it is hands on all the way up to take-off. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Noah Sudolcan) 200812-F-PB738-1103
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If you would like to know little more about how my Strida is put on, please see followings:
Barewood:
www.flickr.com/photos/genuine_strida/5868915157/in/photos...
Comparison:
www.flickr.com/photos/genuine_strida/5869473250/in/photos...
Rubber splayed:
www.flickr.com/photos/genuine_strida/5956578142/in/photos...
Durga
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In Hinduism, Durga one who can redeem in situations of utmost distress; is a form of Devi, the supremely radiant goddess, depicted as having ten arms, riding a lion or a tiger, carrying weapons and a lotus flower, maintaining a meditative smile, and practising mudras, or symbolic hand gestures.
An embodiment of creative feminine force (Shakti), Durga exists in a state of tantrya (independence from the universe and anything/anybody else, i.e., self-sufficiency) and fierce compassion. Kali is considered by Hindus to be an aspect of Durga. Durga is also the mother of Ganesha and Kartikeya. She is thus considered the fiercer, demon-fighting form of Shiva's wife, goddess Parvati. Durga manifests fearlessness and patience, and never loses her sense of humor, even during spiritual battles of epic proportion.
The word Shakti means divine feminine energy/force/power, and Durga is the warrior aspect of the Divine Mother. Other incarnations include Annapurna and Karunamayi. Durga's darker aspect Kali is represented as the consort of the god Shiva, on whose body she is often seen standing.
Durga Slays Mahishasura, Mahabalipuram sculpture.
As a goddess, Durga's feminine power contains the energies of the gods. Each of her weapons was given to her by various gods: Rudra's trident, Vishnu's discus, Indra's thunderbolt, Brahma's kamandalu, Kuber's Ratnahar, etc.
According to a narrative in the Devi Mahatmya story of the Markandeya Purana text, Durga was created as a warrior goddess to fight an asura (an inhuman force/demon) named Mahishasura. He had unleashed a reign of terror on earth, heaven and the nether worlds, and he could not be defeated by any man or god, anywhere. The gods went to Brahma, who had given Mahishasura the power not to be defeated by a man. Brahma could do nothing. They made Brahma their leader and went to Vaikuntha — the place where Vishnu lay on Ananta Naag. They found both Vishnu and Shiva, and Brahma eloquently related the reign of terror Mahishasur had unleashed on the three worlds. Hearing this Vishnu, Shiva and all of the gods became very angry and beams of fierce light emerged from their bodies. The blinding sea of light met at the Ashram of a priest named Katyan. The goddess Durga took the name Katyaayani from the priest and emerged from the sea of light. She introduced herself in the language of the Rig-Veda, saying she was the form of the supreme Brahman who had created all the gods. Now she had come to fight the demon to save the gods. They did not create her; it was her lila that she emerged from their combined energy. The gods were blessed with her compassion.
It is said that upon initially encountering Durga, Mahishasura underestimated her, thinking: "How can a woman kill me, Mahishasur — the one who has defeated the trinity of gods?" However, Durga roared with laughter, which caused an earthquake which made Mahishasur aware of her powers.
And the terrible Mahishasur rampaged against her, changing forms many times. First he was a buffalo demon, and she defeated him with her sword. Then he changed forms and became an elephant that tied up the goddess's lion and began to pull it towards him. The goddess cut off his trunk with her sword. The demon Mahishasur continued his terrorizing, taking the form of a lion, and then the form of a man, but both of them were gracefully slain by Durga.
Then Mahishasur began attacking once more, starting to take the form of a buffalo again. The patient goddess became very angry, and as she sipped divine wine from a cup she smiled and proclaimed to Mahishasur in a colorful tone — "Roar with delight while you still can, O illiterate demon, because when I will kill you after drinking this, the gods themselves will roar with delight".[cite this quote] When Mahashaur had half emerged into his buffalo form, he was paralyzed by the extreme light emitting from the goddess's body. The goddess then resounded with laughter before cutting Mahishasur's head down with her sword.
Thus Durga slew Mahishasur, thus is the power of the fierce compassion of Durga. Hence, Mata Durga is also known as Mahishasurmardhini — the slayer of Mahishasur. According to one legend, the goddess Durga created an army to fight against the forces of the demon-king Mahishasur, who was terrorizing Heaven and Earth. After ten days of fighting, Durga and her army defeated Mahishasur and killed him. As a reward for their service, Durga bestowed upon her army the knowledge of jewelry-making. Ever since, the Sonara community has been involved in the jewelry profession [3].
The goddess as Mahisasuramardhini appears quite early in Indian art. The Archaeological Museum in Matura has several statues on display including a 6-armed Kushana period Mahisasuramardhini that depicts her pressing down the buffalo with her lower hands [4]. A Nagar plaque from the first century BC - first century AD depicts a 4-armed Mahisamardhini accompanied by a lion. But it is in the Gupta period that we see the finest representations of Mahisasuramardhini (2-, 4-, 6-, and at Udayagiri, 12-armed). The spear and trident are her most common weapons. a Mamallapuram relief shows the goddess with 8 arms riding her lion subduing a bufalo-faced demon (as contrasted with a buffalo demon); a variation also seen at Ellora. In later sculptures (post-seventh Century), sculptures show the goddess having decapitated the buffalo demon
Durga Puja
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Durga puja is an annual Hindu festival in South Asia that celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga. It refers to all the six days observed as Mahalaya, Shashthi , Maha Saptami, Maha Ashtami, Maha Navami and Bijoya Dashami. The dates of Durga Puja celebrations are set according to the traditional Hindu calendar and the fortnight corresponding to the festival is called Devi Paksha and is ended on Kojagori Lokkhi Puja
Durga Puja is widely celebrated in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Orissa and Tripura where it is a five-day annual holiday.In West Bengal and Tripura which has majority of Bengali Hindus it is the Biggest festival of the year. Not only is it the biggest Hindu festival celebrated throughout the State, but it is also the most significant socio-cultural event in Bengali society. Apart from eastern India, Durga Puja is also celebrated in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Kashmir, Karnataka and Kerala. Durga Puja is also celebrated as a major festival in Nepal and in Bangladesh where 10% population are Hindu. Nowadays, many diaspora Bengali cultural organizations arrange for Durgotsab in countries such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Singapore and Kuwait, among others. In 2006, a grand Durga Puja ceremony was held in the Great Court of the British Museum.
The prominence of Durga Puja increased gradually during the British Raj in Bengal. After the Hindu reformists identified Durga with India, she became an icon for the Indian independence movement. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the tradition of Baroyari or Community Puja was popularised due to this. After independence, Durga Puja became one of the largest celebrated festivals in the whole world.
Durga Puja also includes the worship of Shiva, Lakshmi, Ganesha, Saraswati and Kartikeya. Modern traditions have come to include the display of decorated pandals and artistically depicted idols (murti) of Durga, exchange of Bijoya Greetings and publication of Puja Annuals.
Baddesley Clinton is not one the grandest of houses, nor is it filled with rare works of art, but having been owned by one family, the Ferrers, since the 16th century and maintained largely intact and original, it is a rare example of the average early-modern home of the lesser gentry. Unlike such mansions as nearby Coughton Court, Baddesley Clinton is relatively small, even cozy, and one can easily imagine the life of the people who lived here. It is best known for being the home of the Jesuit Henry Garnet for almost 14 years, and the existence of several priest hides conceived and built by Nicholas Owen.
The Clintons settled here in the thirteenth century, when it was called just Baddesley, and added their name to the place. They were responsible for the digging of the moat that you see above. It was eventually sold in 1438 to John Brome, a wealthy lawyer, and the Bromes built most of the east and west sides of the house.
John Brome was the Under Treasurer of England but a Lancastrian, and when Henry VI was deposed in 1461 by the Yorkist claimant Edward IV, Brome lost all of his court appointments. He later quarreled with John Herthill, Steward to Richard "the Kingmaker", Earl of Warwick, and Herthill murdered him in 1468 on the porch of the Whitefriars Church in London. Brome's second son, Nicholas, who inherited the estate, eventually avenged his father's murder by killing Herthill in 1471.
Nicholas Brome seems to have had a taste for violence. According to Henry Ferrers, a later owner of the house, it was soon after inheriting Baddesley Clinton that Nicholas 'slew the minister of Baddesley Church findinge him in his plor (parlour) chockinge his wife under ye chinne, and to expiatt these bloody offenses and crimes he built the steeple and raysed the church body ten foote higher". He was pardoned for this killing by both the King and the Pope. Nicholas seems also to have developed a taste for building, and is thought to have been responsible for the building of much of the earliest part of the house. Baddesley Clinton passed into the hands of the Ferrers family in 1517, through the marriage of Nicholas Brome's daughter, Constance, to Sir Edward Ferrers.
The most interesting of the Ferrers is Henry Ferrers (1549-1633), the great-grandson of Sir Edward Ferrers, and contemporary with the times of the Gunpowder Plot. He inherited the property in 1564, and lived through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, dying in the reign of Charles I. He carried out extensive building, including the wing that contains the Great Hall, as well as adding the Great Parlour above the existing entranceway. He also installed much oak paneling and mantels that are still there as well.
Henry Ferrers was an antiquarian, and spent a lifetime collecting historical information, much of which was later used by Sir William Dugdale in the 'Antiquities of Warwickshire'. This interest of his can be seen by the enormous amount of heraldic glass and devices throughout the house. He was trained in the law, and admitted to the Middle Temple in 1572. He may also have served a term as an MP for Cirencester in 1593.
After the death of Henry Ferrers, the fortunes of the Ferrers family fluctuated through periods of heavy taxation such as during the Civil War and in the early eighteenth century, followed by attempts by some generations to maintain and improve the property in better times. The last Ferrers in the direct male line, Marmion Edward Ferrers (1813-1884), was so poor that Lady Chatterton, the aunt of his wife Rebecca, and her husband, Edward Heneage Deering, had to come and live with him to share the expense. These two were only married because of a misunderstanding. It is said that Deering came to Lady Chatterly to ask permission to pay address to her niece, but she thought it was a proposal to her, and accepted. Deering, although she was old enough to be his mother, was too chivalrous to set the story straight!
The estate passed down through Marmion Edward Ferrer's nephew through several relatives, and it was Mr. Thomas Ferrers-Walker who eventually sold the house to the Government, after which it became part of the National Trust. The Ferrers Archive is kept at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Henry Ferrers was also a devout Catholic, but a cautious one and was never convicted for recusancy. He must have been aware of the activities of the Vaux sisters, who rented the house from him in the 1590's in order to secretly shelter Father Henry Garnet and other priests, and to be able to conduct catholic services. Soon after they rented the house, Anne Vaux had Nicholas Owen build secret hiding places, including one created out of the sewer and the moat.
A spectacular raid on Baddesley in October 1591 was recorded both by Father John Gerard in his Autobiography of an Elizabethan, and also by Father Henry Garnet in a letter to his Jesuit superior, Aquaviva. Several priests, including Garnet and Gerard, as well as lay assistants had risen early and were preparing to leave the house, when it was surrounded and all the approach roads blocked by pursuviants. The stable-boys, knowing that so many horses saddled and ready to go would be suspicious, armed themselves with farm implements and blocked the pursuviants attempt at violent entry. This bought some time for those inside the house, as the pursuviants had to resort to requests, and led them to believe that the lady of the house had not yet arisen. Those outside had to wait patiently, albeit not quietly, while those inside were quickly hiding away the priests, Catholic vestments, and all other signs of the presence of a Catholic priest, including the overturning of their mattresses so that the pursuviants could not feel the warmth.
The priests stood in the hiding place in the moat, ankle-deep in cold water for over four hours while the pursuviants tore through the house, although their attempts at intimidation seemed to have far outweighed their skills in searching. Anne Vaux said "here was a searcher pounding the walls in unbelievable fury, there another shifting side-tables, turning over beds. Yet, when any of them touched with their hand or foot the actual place where some sacred object was hidden, he paid not the slightest attention to the most obvious evidence of a contrivance."
The searchers turned up nothing, and eventually left after being paid off by Anne Vaux with twelve gold pieces. As Gerard later said, "Yes, that is the pitiful lot of Catholics when men come with a warrant ... it is the Catholics, not the men who send them, who have to pay. As if it were not enough to suffer, they have to pay for their suffering."
You can still inspect these hiding places today, and we must say they are not for those who are claustrophobic or faint of heart. Until you actually see them, it is hard to imagine the cramped, damp, dark and tomb-like conditions these priests endured.
The first of these is a lath and plaster hutch in the roof above a closet off the bedroom in the gatehouse block. It measures six feet three inches by four feet, and is three feet nine inches high. It contains two wooden benches and is lined with fine hair-plaster.
In the corner of the kitchen, where a garderobe once existed, you can see through to the medieval drain where the hiding place used by Father Gerard and Father Garnet was located. At the time, this could only be accessed through the garderobe shaft in the floor of the Sacristy above. A hiding space beneath the floor of the Library was accessed through the fireplace in the Great Parlour, and can now be viewed from the Moat Room. It was in the Library Room that Nicholas Brome was said to have murdered the priest, and it is reputed to be haunted.
For an excellent account of the priest holes and the work of Nicholas Owen at Baddesley Clinton, the article Elizabethan Priest Holes : III - East Anglia, Baddesley Clinton, Hindlip by Michael Hodgetts, and published in Recusant History, is a must read.
The house itself consists almost entirely of building done by either the Bromes in the fifteenth century or by Henry Ferrers in the sixteenth, and although much repair and alteration work has been carried out inside the house, the panelling, fireplaces and heraldic glass throughout the house all date from the work of Henry Ferrers.
Originally quadrangular in shape, the property today consists of only three blocks, the east including the gatehouse and the Great Parlour, the south containing the Hall, and the west containing the kitchen. The gatehouse and kitchen wing are of grey sandstone, whereas the Hall, which was reconstructed in the 18th century, is of brick.
The crenellated gatehouse is one of the house's most interesting features. The lower part with the gun ports was built by Nicholas Brome in the late fifteenth century, and is thought originally to have had a drawbridge. The upper part was re-formed by Henry Ferrers to accommodate the Great Parlour. The brick bridge was built in the early eighteenth century, and the crenelations added in the nineteenth century. The massive carved oak door in the gatehouse leading through to the courtyard dates from Nicholas Brome.
The present owners are still undertaking restoration work to enable all the documented priest hides and trapdoors to be made available for viewing, this work includes part of the moat tunnel complex that is presently plugged in order to prevent midges from penetrating into the Sacristy and bedrooms
Baddesley Clinton, although still a private dwelling was sold to the Government and passed to the National Trust in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982.
The above was copied from "The gunpowder plot" website.
Great to place to visit. If only there had been some sun!
Baddesley Clinton is not one the grandest of houses, nor is it filled with rare works of art, but having been owned by one family, the Ferrers, since the 16th century and maintained largely intact and original, it is a rare example of the average early-modern home of the lesser gentry. Unlike such mansions as nearby Coughton Court, Baddesley Clinton is relatively small, even cozy, and one can easily imagine the life of the people who lived here. It is best known for being the home of the Jesuit Henry Garnet for almost 14 years, and the existence of several priest hides conceived and built by Nicholas Owen.
The Clintons settled here in the thirteenth century, when it was called just Baddesley, and added their name to the place. They were responsible for the digging of the moat that you see above. It was eventually sold in 1438 to John Brome, a wealthy lawyer, and the Bromes built most of the east and west sides of the house.
John Brome was the Under Treasurer of England but a Lancastrian, and when Henry VI was deposed in 1461 by the Yorkist claimant Edward IV, Brome lost all of his court appointments. He later quarreled with John Herthill, Steward to Richard "the Kingmaker", Earl of Warwick, and Herthill murdered him in 1468 on the porch of the Whitefriars Church in London. Brome's second son, Nicholas, who inherited the estate, eventually avenged his father's murder by killing Herthill in 1471.
Nicholas Brome seems to have had a taste for violence. According to Henry Ferrers, a later owner of the house, it was soon after inheriting Baddesley Clinton that Nicholas 'slew the minister of Baddesley Church findinge him in his plor (parlour) chockinge his wife under ye chinne, and to expiatt these bloody offenses and crimes he built the steeple and raysed the church body ten foote higher". He was pardoned for this killing by both the King and the Pope. Nicholas seems also to have developed a taste for building, and is thought to have been responsible for the building of much of the earliest part of the house. Baddesley Clinton passed into the hands of the Ferrers family in 1517, through the marriage of Nicholas Brome's daughter, Constance, to Sir Edward Ferrers.
The most interesting of the Ferrers is Henry Ferrers (1549-1633), the great-grandson of Sir Edward Ferrers, and contemporary with the times of the Gunpowder Plot. He inherited the property in 1564, and lived through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, dying in the reign of Charles I. He carried out extensive building, including the wing that contains the Great Hall, as well as adding the Great Parlour above the existing entranceway. He also installed much oak paneling and mantels that are still there as well.
Henry Ferrers was an antiquarian, and spent a lifetime collecting historical information, much of which was later used by Sir William Dugdale in the 'Antiquities of Warwickshire'. This interest of his can be seen by the enormous amount of heraldic glass and devices throughout the house. He was trained in the law, and admitted to the Middle Temple in 1572. He may also have served a term as an MP for Cirencester in 1593.
After the death of Henry Ferrers, the fortunes of the Ferrers family fluctuated through periods of heavy taxation such as during the Civil War and in the early eighteenth century, followed by attempts by some generations to maintain and improve the property in better times. The last Ferrers in the direct male line, Marmion Edward Ferrers (1813-1884), was so poor that Lady Chatterton, the aunt of his wife Rebecca, and her husband, Edward Heneage Deering, had to come and live with him to share the expense. These two were only married because of a misunderstanding. It is said that Deering came to Lady Chatterly to ask permission to pay address to her niece, but she thought it was a proposal to her, and accepted. Deering, although she was old enough to be his mother, was too chivalrous to set the story straight!
The estate passed down through Marmion Edward Ferrer's nephew through several relatives, and it was Mr. Thomas Ferrers-Walker who eventually sold the house to the Government, after which it became part of the National Trust. The Ferrers Archive is kept at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Henry Ferrers was also a devout Catholic, but a cautious one and was never convicted for recusancy. He must have been aware of the activities of the Vaux sisters, who rented the house from him in the 1590's in order to secretly shelter Father Henry Garnet and other priests, and to be able to conduct catholic services. Soon after they rented the house, Anne Vaux had Nicholas Owen build secret hiding places, including one created out of the sewer and the moat.
A spectacular raid on Baddesley in October 1591 was recorded both by Father John Gerard in his Autobiography of an Elizabethan, and also by Father Henry Garnet in a letter to his Jesuit superior, Aquaviva. Several priests, including Garnet and Gerard, as well as lay assistants had risen early and were preparing to leave the house, when it was surrounded and all the approach roads blocked by pursuviants. The stable-boys, knowing that so many horses saddled and ready to go would be suspicious, armed themselves with farm implements and blocked the pursuviants attempt at violent entry. This bought some time for those inside the house, as the pursuviants had to resort to requests, and led them to believe that the lady of the house had not yet arisen. Those outside had to wait patiently, albeit not quietly, while those inside were quickly hiding away the priests, Catholic vestments, and all other signs of the presence of a Catholic priest, including the overturning of their mattresses so that the pursuviants could not feel the warmth.
The priests stood in the hiding place in the moat, ankle-deep in cold water for over four hours while the pursuviants tore through the house, although their attempts at intimidation seemed to have far outweighed their skills in searching. Anne Vaux said "here was a searcher pounding the walls in unbelievable fury, there another shifting side-tables, turning over beds. Yet, when any of them touched with their hand or foot the actual place where some sacred object was hidden, he paid not the slightest attention to the most obvious evidence of a contrivance."
The searchers turned up nothing, and eventually left after being paid off by Anne Vaux with twelve gold pieces. As Gerard later said, "Yes, that is the pitiful lot of Catholics when men come with a warrant ... it is the Catholics, not the men who send them, who have to pay. As if it were not enough to suffer, they have to pay for their suffering."
You can still inspect these hiding places today, and we must say they are not for those who are claustrophobic or faint of heart. Until you actually see them, it is hard to imagine the cramped, damp, dark and tomb-like conditions these priests endured.
The first of these is a lath and plaster hutch in the roof above a closet off the bedroom in the gatehouse block. It measures six feet three inches by four feet, and is three feet nine inches high. It contains two wooden benches and is lined with fine hair-plaster.
In the corner of the kitchen, where a garderobe once existed, you can see through to the medieval drain where the hiding place used by Father Gerard and Father Garnet was located. At the time, this could only be accessed through the garderobe shaft in the floor of the Sacristy above. A hiding space beneath the floor of the Library was accessed through the fireplace in the Great Parlour, and can now be viewed from the Moat Room. It was in the Library Room that Nicholas Brome was said to have murdered the priest, and it is reputed to be haunted.
For an excellent account of the priest holes and the work of Nicholas Owen at Baddesley Clinton, the article Elizabethan Priest Holes : III - East Anglia, Baddesley Clinton, Hindlip by Michael Hodgetts, and published in Recusant History, is a must read.
The house itself consists almost entirely of building done by either the Bromes in the fifteenth century or by Henry Ferrers in the sixteenth, and although much repair and alteration work has been carried out inside the house, the panelling, fireplaces and heraldic glass throughout the house all date from the work of Henry Ferrers.
Originally quadrangular in shape, the property today consists of only three blocks, the east including the gatehouse and the Great Parlour, the south containing the Hall, and the west containing the kitchen. The gatehouse and kitchen wing are of grey sandstone, whereas the Hall, which was reconstructed in the 18th century, is of brick.
The crenellated gatehouse is one of the house's most interesting features. The lower part with the gun ports was built by Nicholas Brome in the late fifteenth century, and is thought originally to have had a drawbridge. The upper part was re-formed by Henry Ferrers to accommodate the Great Parlour. The brick bridge was built in the early eighteenth century, and the crenelations added in the nineteenth century. The massive carved oak door in the gatehouse leading through to the courtyard dates from Nicholas Brome.
The present owners are still undertaking restoration work to enable all the documented priest hides and trapdoors to be made available for viewing, this work includes part of the moat tunnel complex that is presently plugged in order to prevent midges from penetrating into the Sacristy and bedrooms
Baddesley Clinton, although still a private dwelling was sold to the Government and passed to the National Trust in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982.
The above was copied from "The gunpowder plot" website.
Great to place to visit. If only there had been some sun!
Mustafa İsmet İnönü (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈmet ˈinœny]; 23 September 1886 – 25 December 1973) was a Turkish army officer and statesman who served as the second president of Turkey from November 11, 1938, to May 22 1950, and as its prime minister three times: from 1923 to 1924, 1925 to 1937, and 1961 to 1965.
İnönü is acknowledged by many as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's right-hand man, with their friendship going back to the Caucasus campaign. In the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, he served as the first chief of the General Staff from 1922 to 1924 for the regular Turkish army, during which he commanded forces during the First and Second Battles of İnönü. Atatürk bestowed İsmet with the surname İnönü, the site of the battles, when the 1934 Surname Law was adopted. He was also chief negotiator in the Mudanya and Lausanne conferences for the Ankara government, successfully negotiating away the Sevre treaty for the Treaty of Lausanne. As his prime minister for most of his presidency, İnönü executed many of Atatürk's modernizing and nationalist reforms. İnönü gave the orders to carry out the Zilan Massacre.
İnönü succeeded Atatürk as president of Turkey after his death in 1938 and was granted the official title of Millî Şef ("National Chief" by the parliament. As president and chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP), İnönü initially continued Turkey's one party state. Kemalist style programs continued to make great strides in education by supporting projects such as Village Institutes. His governments implemented notably heavy statist economic policies. The Hatay State was annexed in 1939, and Turkey was able to maintain an armed neutrality during World War II, joining the Allied powers only three months before the end of the European Theater. The Turkish Straits crisis prompted İnönü to build closer ties with the Western powers, with the country eventually joining NATO in 1952, though by then he was no longer president.
Factionalism between statists and liberals in the CHP led to the creation of the Democrat Party in 1946. İnönü held the first multiparty elections in the Republic's history that year, beginning Turkey's multiparty period. 1950 saw a peaceful transfer of power to the Democrats when the CHP suffered defeat in the elections. For ten years, İnönü served as the leader of the opposition before returning to power as prime minister following the 1961 election, held after the 1960 coup-d'état. The 1960s saw İnönü reinvent the CHP as a political party, which was "Left of Center" as a new party cadre led by Bülent Ecevit became more influential. İnönü remained leader of the CHP until 1972, when he was defeated by Ecevit in a leadership contest. He died on December 25, 1973, of a heart attack, at the age of 89. He is interred opposite to Atatürk's mausoleum at Anıtkabir in Ankara.
İsmet İnönü (born Mustafa İsmet) was born in 1886 in Smyrna (İzmir) in the Aidin Vilayet to Hacı Reşit and Cevriye (later Cevriye Temelli). Hacı Reşit was retired after serving as director of the First Examinant Department of the Legal Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry (Harbiye Nezareti Muhakemat Dairesi Birinci Mümeyyizliği). A member of the Kürümoğlu family of Bitlis, İnönü's father was born in Malatya. According to its members studying the ancestral background of the family, Kürümoğlus were of Turkish origin, while secondary sources refer to the family as of Kurdish descent. His mother was the daughter of Müderris Hasan Efendi, who belonged to the ulem and was a member of the Turkish family of Razgrad (present-day Bulgaria). In 1933 he visited Razgrad since the city's Turkish cemetery was attacked. İsmet was the family's second child; he had three brothers, including the family's first child, Ahmet Midhat, two younger brothers, Hasan Rıza and Hayri (Temelli), as well as a sister Seniha (Otakan). Due to his father's assignments, the family moved from one city to another.
İnönü completed his primary education in Sivas and graduated from Sivas Military Junior High School (Sivas Askerî Rüştiyesi) in 1894. He then studied at the Sivas School for Civil Servants (Sivas Mülkiye İdadisi) for a year. He graduated from the Imperial School of Military Engineering in 1904 as a lieutenant gunnery officer and entered the Military Academy to graduate as a first-rank staff captain on September 26, 1906. İnönü started his duty in the Second Army based in Adrianople (Edirne) on October 2, 1906, in the 3rd Battery Command of the 8th Field Artillery Regiment. As part of his platoon officer staff internship, he gave lessons in military strategy and artillery. Captain İsmet was also part of the Ottoman–Bulgarian commissions.
Through Ali Fethi (Okyar), he briefly joined the Committee of Union and Progress in 1907, which wished to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid II. During the 31 March Incident, he was on the staff of the Second Cavalry Division, which was mobilized to join the Action Army and marched on Constantinople (İstanbul) to depose Abdul Hamid II. Returning to Adrianople following the suppression of the mutiny, İnönü left the committee in the summer of 1909.
He won his first military victory by suppressing Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin's revolt in Yemen. İsmet eventually became chief of staff of the force sent to suppress the rebellion and personally negotiated with Imam Yahya in Kaffet-ül-Uzer to bring Yemen back into the empire. For this, he was promoted to the rank of major. He returned to Constantinople in March 1913 to defend the capital from Bulgarian attack during the First Balkan War. İnönü was part of the Turkish delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Constantinople with the Bulgarians as a military adviser. He held a close relationship with Enver Pasha and played an active role in the reformation of the army.
İnönü began climbing the ranks during World War I, becoming lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1914, and then being appointed as the First Branch Manager of the General Headquarters on December 2. He was appointed chief of staff of the Second Army on October 9, 1915, and was promoted to the rank of colonel on December 14 December 1915.
Inönü married Emine Mevhibe Hanim on April 13, 1917, when he was 31 and she was only 20 (for she was more than ten years his junior whilst he was more than ten years her senior), three weeks before he left for the front to return home only after the conclusion of the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918.[13] Of which she later bore his three sons and one daughter. He began working with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) Pasha as a corps commander on the Caucasian Front. İnönü was appointed to the IV Corps Command on January 12, 1917, upon the recommendation of Atatürk. He was recalled to Constantinople after a while and returned to take part as a corps commander of the Seventh Army. On May 1, he was appointed to command XX Corps on the Palestine Front, and then III Corps on June 20. He once again came into contact with Atatürk when he assumed command of the Seventh Army. İnönü's forces received the brunt of Edmond Allenby's attack on Beersheba that ended the stalemate on the Sinai front. He was wounded in the Battle of Megiddo and was sent back to Constantinople, where he held various administrative positions in the War Ministry during the armistice period.
After the military occupation of Constantinople on March 16, 1920, İnönü decided to escape to Anatolia to join the Ankara government. He and his chief of staff, Major Saffet (Arıkan) escaped Maltepe in the evening of March 19 and arrived in Ankara on April 9. He joined the Grand National Assembly (GNA), which was opened on April 23, 1920, as a deputy of Edirne. Like many others in the Turkish National Movement, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Ottoman government on June 6, 1920. In May 1920, he was appointed chief of the general staff. The next year, he was appointed commander of the Western Front of the Army of the GNA, a position in which he remained during the Turkish War of Independence. He was promoted to the rank of Mirliva (to that extent, Pasha) after winning the First and Second Battle of İnönü. When the 1934 Surname Law was adopted Atatürk bestowed İsmet Pasha with the surname İnönü, where the battles took place.
İnönü was replaced by Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), who was also the prime minister and minister of defense at the time, as the chief of staff after the Turkish forces lost major battles against the advancing Greek Army in July 1921, as a result of which the cities of Afyonkarahisar, Kütahya and Eskişehir were temporarily lost. During the war, İnönü's infant son İzzet died before his victory in Sakarya and this news was only delivered to him in the spring of 1922. His wife, Emine Mevhibe hid the news and the severity of his son's sickness due to the intensity of the war. He participated as a staff officer (with the rank Brigadier General) in the later battles, including Dumlupınar.
Chief negotiator in Mudanya and Lausanne
See also: Armistice of Mudanya and Treaty of Lausanne
After the War of Independence was won, İnönü was appointed as the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation, both for the Armistice of Mudanya and for the Treaty of Lausanne.
The Lausanne conference convened in late 1922 to settle the terms of a new treaty that would take the place of the Treaty of Sèvres. İnönü became famous for his stubborn resolve in determining the position of Ankara as the legitimate, sovereign government of Turkey. After delivering his position, İsmet turned off his hearing aid during the speeches of British foreign secretary Lord Curzon. When Curzon had finished, İnönü reiterated his position as if Curzon had never said a word.
İsmet İnönü served as the prime minister of Turkey throughout Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's presidency, stepping down as prime minister for three months during Fethi Okyar's premiership and in the last year of Atatürk's presidency when he was replaced by Celal Bayar. İnönü therefore helped to execute most of Atatürk's reformist programs. It was his suggestion to make Ankara the capital of Turkey, which was approved by the parliament. İnönü was also an important factor in the proclamation of the Republic and the abolition of the Caliphate and Evkaf Ministry. He resigned from the premiership for health reasons on November 22, 1924 for Fethi Okyar, but since Okyar lost a vote of confidence from parliament due to the Sheikh Said rebellion, İnönü returned to the prime ministry.
İnönü immediately banned all opposition parties (including the Progressive Republican Party) and the press. Independence Tribunals were reestablished to prosecute the Kurdish rebels. In 1926, it allegedly came out that former members of the CUP attempted to assassinate Atatürk in the İzmir plot, which resulted in the remaining CUP leaders being executed. İnönü retired his military command in 1927.
While dealing with the Sheikh Said revolt, İnönü proclaimed a Turkish nationalist policy and encouraged the Turkification of the non-Turkish population. Following the suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion, he presided over the Reform Council for the East, which prepared the Report for Reform in the East, which recommended impede the establishment of a Kurdish elite, forbid non-Turkish languages, and create regional administrative units called Inspectorates-General, which were to be governed by martial law. He stated the following in regards to the Kurds; "We're frankly nationalists, and nationalism is our only factor of cohesion. Before the Turkish majority, other elements had no kind of influence. At any price, we must turkify the inhabitants of our land, and we will annihilate those who oppose." Following this report, three Inspectorates-General were established in the Kurdish areas, which comprise several provinces. On the direct order of İnönü, the Zilan massacre of thousands of Kurdish civilians was perpetrated by the Turkish Land Forces in the Zilan Valley of Van Province on July 12 and 13, 1930, during the Ararat rebellion. Nation building was codified into law when a new settlement regime was enacted in 1934, resettling Albanians, Abkhazians, Circassians, and Kurds in new areas in order to create a homogeneous Turkish state.
İnönü was responsible for most of the reformist legislation promulgated during Turkey's one party period. The Hat Law and the closure of Dervish lodges were enacted in 1925; in 1928, the Turkish alphabet switched to being written with Latin characters, and in 1934, titles such as Efendi, Bey, and Pasha were abolished; and certain articles of religious clothing were banned, though İnönü was and still is popularly known as İsmet Pasha. 1934 was also the year that the Surname Law was adopted, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk bestowing İsmet with the surname İnönü, the location where İsmet won the battles against the Greek army in 1921. He was also a proponent of replacing foreign loan words with "Pure Turkish" words.
İnönü managed the economy with heavy-handed government intervention, especially during the Great Depression, by implementing an economic plan inspired by the Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union. In doing so, he took much private property under government control. Due to his efforts, to this day, more than 70% of land in Turkey is still owned by the state.
Desiring a more liberal economic system, Atatürk dissolved the government of İnönü in 1937 and appointed Celâl Bayar, the founder of the first Turkish commercial bank, Türkiye İş Bankası, as prime minister, thus beginning a decades long rivalry between Bayar and İnönü.
After the death of Atatürk on November 10, 1938, İnönü was viewed as the most appropriate candidate to succeed him and was unanimously elected the second president of the Republic of Turkey and leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP). He attempted to build himself a cult of personality by receiving the official title of Millî Şef, i.e., "National Chief".
One of his first actions was to annex in 1939 the Hatay State, which declared independence from French Syria. İnönü also wished to move on from one-party rule by taking incremental steps to multiparty politics. He hoped to accomplish this by establishing the Independent Group as a force of opposition in the parliament, but they fell short of expectations under wartime conditions. İnönü dismissed Bayar's government because of differences between the two on economic policy in 1939. İnönü was an avowed statist, while Bayar wished for a more liberal economy. Turkey's early industrialization accelerated under İnönü but the onset of World War II disrupted economic growth.
Much reform in education was accomplished during İnönü's presidency through the efforts of Hasan Âli Yücel, who was minister of education throughout İnönü's governments. 1940 saw the establishment of the Village Institutes, in which well-performing students from the country were selected to train as teachers and return to their hometown to run community development programs.
World War II broke out in the first year of his presidency, and both the Allies and the Axis pressured İnönü to bring Turkey into the war on their side. The Germans sent Franz von Papen to Ankara in April 1939, while the British sent Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen and the French René Massigli. On April 23, 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu told Knatchbull-Hugessen of his nation's fears of Italian claims to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum and German control of the Balkans and suggested an Anglo-Soviet-Turkish alliance as the best way of countering the Axis. In May 1939, during the visit of Maxime Weygand to Turkey, İnönü told the French Ambassador René Massigli that he believed that the best way of stopping Germany was an alliance of Turkey, the Soviet Union, France and Britain; that if such an alliance came into being, the Turks would allow Soviet ground and air forces onto their soil; and that he wanted a major programme of French military aid to modernize the Turkish armed forces.
The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, 1939, drew Turkey away from the Allies; the Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and thus the signing of the German-Soviet pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. With the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, İnönü chose to be neutral in World War II as taking on Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time would be too much for Turkey, though he signed a tripartite treaty of alliance with Britain and France on October 19, 1939, obligating Turkey's entry into the war if fighting spread to the Mediterranean. However, with France's defeat in June 1940 İnönü abandoned the pro-Allied neutrality that he had followed since the beginning of the war. A major embarrassment for the Turks occurred in July 1940 when the Germans captured and published documents from the Quai d'Orsay in Paris showing the Turks were aware of Operation Pike—as the Anglo-French plan in the winter of 1939–40 to bomb the oil fields in the Soviet Union from Turkey was codenamed—which was intended by Berlin to worsen relations between Ankara and Moscow. In turn, worsening relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey were intended to drive Turkey into the arms of the Reich. After the publication of the French documents relating to Operation Pike, İnönü pulled out of the tripartide pact signed with Britain and France and signed the German–Turkish Treaty of Friendship and the Clodius Agreement, which placed Turkey within the German economic sphere of influence, but İnönü went no further towards the Axis.
In the first half of 1941, Germany, which was intent on invading the Soviet Union, went out of its way to improve relations with Turkey as the Reich hoped for benevolent Turkish neutrality when the German-Soviet war began. At the same time, the British had great hopes in the spring of 1941 when they dispatched an expeditionary force to Greece that İnönü could be persuaded to enter the war on the Allied side as the British leadership had high hopes of creating a Balkan front that would tie down German forces, which thus led to a major British diplomatic offensive with Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden visiting Ankara several times to meet with İnönü. İnönü always told Eden that the Turks would not join the British forces in Greece, and the Turks would only enter the war if Germany attacked Turkey. For his part, Papen offered İnönü parts of Greece if Turkey were to enter the war on the Axis side, an offer İnönü declined. In May 1941 when the Germans dispatched an expeditionary force to Iraq to fight against the British, İnönü refused Papen's request that the German forces be allowed transit rights to Iraq. Another attempt by Hitler to woo Turkey came in February 1943, when Talaat Pasha's remains were returned to Turkey for a state burial.
Internal opposition to Turkish neutrality came from ultra-nationalist circles and factions of the military that wished to incorporate the Turkic-populated areas of the Soviet Union by allying with Germany. This almost erupted into a coup d'état against the government. Leading pan-Turkists including Alparslan Türkeş, Nihal Atsız, and Şaik Gökyay were arrested and sentenced time in prison in the Racism-Turanism trials.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill traveled to Ankara in January 1943 for a conference with President İnönu to urge Turkey's entry into the war on the allied side. Churchill met secretly with İnönü inside a railroad car at the Yenice Station near Adana. By 4–6 December 1943, İnönü felt confident enough about the outcome of the war that he met openly with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Second Cairo Conference. Until 1941, both Roosevelt and Churchill thought that Turkey's continued neutrality would serve the interests of the Allies by blocking the Axis from reaching the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East. But the early victories of the Axis up to the end of 1942 caused Roosevelt and Churchill to re-evaluate possible Turkish participation in the war on the side of the Allies. Turkey had maintained a decently-sized army and air force throughout the war, and Churchill wanted the Turks to open a new front in the Balkans. Roosevelt, on the other hand, still believed that a Turkish attack would be too risky and an eventual Turkish failure would have disastrous effects for the Allies.
İnönü knew very well the hardships that his country had suffered during decades of incessant war between 1908 and 1922 and was determined to keep Turkey out of another war as long as he could. The young Turkish Republic was still re-building, recovering from the losses due to earlier wars, and lacked any modern weapons and the infrastructure to enter a war to be fought along and possibly within its borders. İnönü based his neutrality policy during the Second World War on the premise that Western Allies and the Soviet Union would sooner or later have a falling out after the war. Thus, İnönu wanted assurances on financial and military aid for Turkey, as well as a guarantee that the United States and the United Kingdom would stand beside Turkey in the event of a Soviet invasion of the Turkish Straits after the war. In August 1944, İnönü broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and on January 5, 1945, İnönü severed diplomatic relations with Japan. Shortly afterwards, İnönü allowed Allied shipping to use the Turkish Straits to send supplies to the Soviet Union, and on February 25, 1945, he declared war on Germany and Japan. For this Turkey became a founding member of the United Nations.
The post-war tensions and arguments surrounding the Turkish Straits would come to be known as the Turkish Straits crisis. The fear of Soviet invasion and Joseph Stalin's unconcealed desire for Soviet military bases in the Turkish Straits eventually caused Turkey to give up its principle of neutrality in foreign relations and join NATO in February 1952.
Domestic policy
Maintaining an armed neutrality proved to be disruptive for the young republic. The country existed in a practical state of war throughout the Second World War: military production was prioritized at the expense of peacetime goods, rationing and curfews were implemented, and high taxes were put in place, causing severe economic hardship for many. One such tax was the Wealth Tax (Varlık Vergisi), a discriminatory tax that demanded very high one-time payments from Turkey's non-Muslim minorities. This tax is seen by many to be a continuation of the Jizya tax paid by dhimmis during Ottoman times, or Millî İktisat (National Economy) economic policy implemented by the Committee of Union and Progress regime three decades ago. It was only repealed in 1944 under American and British pressure.
A famous story of İnönü happened in a meeting in Bursa for the 1969 general elections. A young man yelled at him, "You let us go without food!" İnönü replied to him by saying, "Yes, I let you go without food, but I did not let you become fatherless," implying the death of millions of people from both sides of World War II.
For the Kemalists there was always a desire for Turkey to develop into a democracy. Before the Independent Group, Atatürk experimented with opposition through the Liberal Republican Party, which lasted three months before it had to be shut down when reactionaries threatened to hijack the party. In an opening speech to the Grand National Assembly on November 1, 1945, İnönü openly expressed the country's need for an opposition party. He welcomed Celal Bayar establishing the Democrat Party (DP), which separated from the CHP. However, due to the anti-Communist hysteria brought on by the new Soviet threat, new leftist parties were swiftly banned, and rural development initiatives such as the Village Institutes and People's Rooms were closed. Even with such pressure on the left, İnönü established the Ministry of Labour in 1945 and signed into law important protections for workers. Universities were given autonomy, and İnönü's title of "unchangeable chairman" of CHP was abolished.
İnönü allowed for Turkey's first multiparty elections to be held in 1946; however, the elections were infamously not free and fair; voting was carried out under the gaze of onlookers who could determine which voters had voted for which parties, and secrecy prevailed as to the subsequent counting of votes. Instead of inviting Şükrü Saraçoğlu to form another government, he assigned CHP hardliner Recep Peker to the task, who contributed to a polarizing atmosphere in the parliament. İnönü had to act as a mediator several times between Peker and Bayar, who threatened to have the DP walk from parliament if they didn't have some of their demands met, such as ensuring judicial review, secret ballots, and public counting for elections. On 12 July 1947 İsmet İnönü gave a speech broadcast on radio and in newspapers that he would stand equal distance from the government and opposition, prompting Peker's resignation.
Free and fair national elections had to wait until 1950, and on that occasion, İnönü's government was defeated. In the 1950 election campaign, the leading figures of the Democrat Party used the slogan "Geldi İsmet, kesildi kısmet" ("İsmet arrived, [our] fortune left"). CHP lost the election with 41% of the vote against DP's 55%, but due to the winner-takes-all electoral system, DP received 85% of the seats in parliament. İnönü presided over the peaceful transfer of power to the DP leaders, Bayar and Adnan Menderes. Bayar would serve as Turkey's third president, and Menderes would be its first prime minister not from the CHP.
For ten years, İnönü served as the leader of the opposition. In opposition, the CHP established its youth and women's branches. On June 22 June 1953, the establishment of trade unions and vocational chambers was proposed, and the right to strike for workers was added to the party program. The CHP formed an electoral alliance with the Republican Nation Party and Liberty party for the 1957 election, which was blocked by the DP government.
In the lead-up to the elections prepared for 1960, İnönü and CHP members faced regular harassment from the authorities and DP supporters, to the point where he was almost lynched several times. In 1958, the DP mayor of Zile declared martial law and mobilized the gendarmerie to prevent İnönü from conducting a rally in the city; a similar event happened in the city of Çankırı. In 1959, İnönü began a campaign tour that followed the same path he took thirty years ago as a Pasha from Uşak to İzmir and ended in victory for the Turkish nationalists. The DP minister of interior refused to promise protection to him. In Uşak, a crowd blocked İnönü from going to his podium, and he was hit in the head with a stone. Following his "Great Offensive," he flew to Istanbul, where he was almost lynched by a DP-organized mob on the way to Topkapı Palace. He was also banned from speaking in rallies in Kayseri and Yeşilhisar.
İnönü was banned from 12 sessions of parliament. This coincided an authoritarian turn of the Democrat Party, which culminated in a military coup.
The Turkish Armed Forces overthrew the government as a result of the military coup on 27 May 1960. After one year of junta rule in which the Democrat Party was banned and its top leaders executed in the Yassıada Trials, elections were held once the military returned to their barracks. İnönü returned to power as Prime Minister after the 1961 election, in which the CHP won the election. Right-wing parties have since continuously attacked İnönü and the CHP for their perceived involvement in the hanging of Prime minister Menderes, even though İnönü advocated for Menderes' pardoning.
İnönü's governments were defined by an effort to deescalate tensions between radical forces in the Turkish army wishing for extended junta rule and former Democrats that wished for amnesty. İnönü's CHP did not gain enough seats in the legislature to win a majority in the elections, so in an effort to create reconciliation, he formed coalition governments with the neo-Democrat Justice Party the New Turkey Party and the Republican Villagers Nation Party until 1965. Forming coalitions with DP successor parties, however, provoked radical officers into action. Colonel Talat Aydemir twice attempted to overthrow the government in 1962 and 1963 Turkish coup d'etat attempt. Aydemir was later executed for conducting both coups. Aydemir's 1962 coup had the most potential to succeed when İnönü, President Cemal Gürsel and Chief of Staff Cevdet Sunay were held up in Çankaya Mansion by the putschists. Aydemir decided to let the group go, which foiled the coup.
While in coalition with the far-right Republican Villagers Nation Party, İnönü renounced the Greco-Turkish Treaty of Friendship of 1930 and took actions against the Greek minority. The Turkish government also strictly enforced a long-overlooked law barring Greek nationals from 30 professions and occupations; for example, Greeks could not be doctors, nurses, architects, shoemakers, tailors, plumbers, cabaret singers, ironsmiths, cooks, tourist guides, etc., and 50,000 more Greeks were deported. These actions were taken because of the growing anti-Greek sentiment in Turkey after the ethnic conflict in Cyprus flared up again. With an invasion of the island imminent, American President Lyndon Johnson sent a memorandum to İnönü, effectively vetoing Turkish intervention. A subsequent meeting at the White House between İnönü and Johnson on June 22, 1964, meant Cyprus' status quo continued for another ten years. An event a couple years earlier also strained the otherwise amicable relationship İnönü held with Washington, namely the withdrawal of the nuclear-armed PGM-19 Jupiter MRBMs briefly stationed in Turkey, which was undertaken in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Washington withdrew the MRBMs, some B61 nuclear bombs are still stored in İncirlik Air Base.
İnönü's governments established the National Security Council, Turkish Statistical Institute, and Turkey's leading research institute, TÜBİTAK. Turkey signed the Ankara agreement, the first treaty of cooperation with the European Economic Community, and also increased ties with Iran and Pakistan. The army was modernized, and the National Intelligence Organization was founded. İnönü was instrumental in establishing CHP as "Left of Center" on the political spectrum as a new left-wing party cadre led by his protégé Bülent Ecevit became more influential. İnönü survived an assassination attempt from a Menderes supporter in 1964.
İnönü returned to the opposition after losing both the 1965 and 1969 general elections to a much younger man, Justice Party leader Süleyman Demirel. He remained leader of the CHP until 1972, when an interparty crisis over his endorsement of the 1971 military memorandum led to his defeat by Ecevit in the 5th extraordinary CHP convention. This was the first overthrow of a party leader in a leadership contest in the Republic's history. İnönü left his party and resigned his parliamentarianship afterward. Being a former president he was a member of the Senate in the last year of his life.
On December 25, 1973, İsmet İnönü died of a heart attack at the age of 87. The parliament declared national mourning until his burial. He was interred at Anıtkabir opposite Atatürk's mausoleum, on December 28. Following the 1980 coup, Kenan Evren transferred twelve graves from Anıtkabir, but kept İnönü's in place. İnönü's tomb took its present shape in January 1997.
Sinta (Greek: Σίντα; Turkish: İnönü or Sinde) is a village in the Famagusta District of Cyprus. It is under the de facto control of Northern Cyprus. The village was recorded as early as the early 13th century in papal documents.
Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.
Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.
A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.
Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.
Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.
Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.
The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.
Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.
Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.
By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.
EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.
However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.
On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.
In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.
By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.
In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.
The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.
After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".
As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.
Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.
The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.
Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.
The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis". Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.
Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.
Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria
An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."
In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.
Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.
In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.
Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.
Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.
Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:
UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.
The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.
By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."
After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.
On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.
The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.
During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.
In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.
Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.
A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.
Maintaining secure communications within a UN peacekeeping mission is an operational necessity. While it may look antiquated by today’s standards, the telephone exchange used by the Signal Corps of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) was considered high-tech back in 1973.
1 April 1973
Credit: UN Photo
U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF OPERATIONS (Aug. 26, 2015) U.S. Marines with India Company, Battalion Landing Team 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, buddy-rush alongside Jordanian Soldiers during a bilateral training evolution. The 15th MEU is deployed throughout the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations to maintain regional security. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jamean Berry/Released)
Twitter: bit.ly/1xr6HiM
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15th MEU: go.usa.gov/FnwB
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Joe Palca, Science Correspondent, NPR, USA speaking during the Session "Maintaining Innovation" at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 20, 2017. .Copyright by World Economic Forum / Manuel Lopez
INVERNESS-SHIRE CONSTABULARY 1899-1900-1901
- The big picture!
(by Dave Conner)
This superbly done composite photograph shows the entire establishment of the Police Force for the County of Inverness between 1899 and 1901 (excluding the Royal Burgh of Inverness, which maintained its own Police from 1847 until 1968). Unfortunately the collage project was begun after the murder of Constable Thomas King in December 1898 so there is sadly no photographic record of the only officer of that force ever murdered on duty.
The Inverness-shire force had the largest establishment of any force in the Highlands & Islands, and even then each of the 61 Constables (of the 74 officers) had a huge area to patrol.
The original of this photograph is very large so I had to scan it in four pieces and then painstakingly edit them together on the computer to reproduce the image.
The original was presented to Chief Constable Alexander ("Alistair") McHardy in 1901, to commemorate his 35 years as a Chief Constable (1866-1882 of Sutherlandshire, and from 1882 onwards of Inverness-shire).
Mr McHardy had joined Aberdeenshire Constabulary (and apparently being "economical with the truth" about his age) in 1858 when - by his own later admission - he could only have been 17. This is revealed in Mr McHardy's own handwriting when setting up a replacement Personnel Register for the Inverness-shire force in 1883 - as the old book was becoming unwieldy with all the now irrelevant pages of those who has since left the force since the first book was created in 1858. In the huge leather-bound volume , he recorded his own details on Page 1 (well, being the Chief he was indeed "number 1") that he was born at Glen Lui, Braemar on 9th June 1839 and joined the Aberdeenshire Constabulary on 22nd March 1858 (which would have been around the time of its inception).
Although he did not go into much detail as to his subsequent career, I have researched away at it and finally managed to piece together more details of a meteoric rise through the ranks, which would put current Accelerated Promotion in the shade.
In July 1859 - with only 16 months police service - he moved to the Sutherland Constabulary at Dornoch on promotion to Sergeant (and Deputy Chief Constable). At that time the Chief Constable of Sutherland was one Peter Ewen, a native of Aberdeenshire and with previous service in the Banffshire and Aberdeen City police forces. Mr Ewan had been appointed on the recommendation of Sheriff Lumsden, the Sheriff Principal, who had a farm in Aberdeenshire and who had been tasked to consider the various candidates. Both Sheriff and Mr Ewan doubtless had many contacts in their home area and would have put out feelers there to find a Deputy, and young McHardy must have come highly recommended. His time in Sutherland was not to be long however, and when he moved south to another role, it comes as no surprise to find that his replacement also came from Aberdeenshire. George Bridgeford had also joined the Aberdeenshire force in 1858 - likely he and McHardy knew each other? Albeit there is a bit of gap between McHardy's departure and Bridgeford's arrival - possibly someone else was appointed in the interim but did not last the pace?)
So in May 1861 McHardy moved to Fife Constabulary, giving his age as 22 and retaining the Sergeant rank, being initially stationed at Force HQ at Cupar. On 16 November 1861, he was promoted to the rank of Inspector, and transferred to Kirkcaldy. Then on 14 February 1862 he was again promoted, this time to Superintendent - and Deputy Chief Constable - moving back to HQ in Cupar in the process.
After apparently doing a very good job of Acting Chief Constable for a period following the death of the Fife Chief Constable (but presumably not being considered for the vacant post, although the new incumbent praised him highly for the work he had done and kept him on as Deputy Chief Constable), Alistair McHardy successfully applied for the vacancy as Chief Constable of Sutherland, being appointed on 7th August 1866 - with 8 years service, of which had been at promoted rank. George Bridgeford, who had succeeded him as Sergeant and DCC, was still in post, and indeed would remain so as Deputy Chief right up until 1904.
In 1882 the matter of land was a serious one and there was much disruption in all the northern counties as crofters took a determined stand again their landowners. Chief Constable William Murray of Inverness-shire Constabulary - the largest county in Scotland - clearly saw the issue coming to a head. He thus intimated his intention to retire (he had been in post since 1858 and was likely of a mind that he was getting too old for all this hassle). Thus candidates were sought to become the new Chief Constable of Inverness-shire and on 2nd December 1882 Mr McHardy was appointed, a post which he held until his death at the age of 71 on 30th April 1911. He is interred in Tomnahurich Cemetery, Inverness, and his immense gravestone incorporates crossed golf clubs. Always a keen sportsman, and no mean competitor on the Highland Games field in his younger days, McHardy had likely "found" golf during his time in Fife, and was subsequently instrumental in the setting up of Dornoch and Inverness Golf Clubs. He was also called upon to design a number of golf courses in the Highlands.
The photographer who produced the collage of the Inverness-shire force's members also made a number of copies, some rather large and others much smaller. Presumably many officers wished a copy as a memento. It took 2 years (almost 3 in fact) in its compilation as it was necessary for each officer to pay a visit to a photographer for the individual shot. As many officers lived and worked in remote areas, opportunities to have such a photograph taken were infrequent to say the least.
The composite consists of 74 officers, namely:
Chief Constable McHardy,
his Deputy (Supt Hugh Chisholm, later Chief Constable of Sutherland),
four Divisional Inspectors (based at Inverness, Fort William, Portree, and Lochmaddy),
7 Section Sergeants, and
61 Constables who were based around the largest County in Scotland.
Within a year of McHardy's appointment to Inverness-shire, he had more than doubled the size of the force - 44 men when he took over - as he bolstered staffing levels to enable him to place a constable at more locations around the Western Highlands, and particularly in the Islands where land disturbance and was becoming a serious matter. By the item this collage photograph was produced however, the situation had been defused considerably and the force was able to reduce its numbers somewhat, albeit still almost double to the numbers McHardy had inherited.
Normal practice would of course have been a simple group photograph - but for the force covering the largest County in Scotland it was simply not possible to get everybody in one place simultaneously without involving most of the officers (especially those based in the Islands or remote parts of the Western Mainland) having to undergo a formidable amount of travel - and of course thereby denuding the County of police presence for up to a week.
Thanks to the clear photograph (where every officer is named in small text), and the survival of the complete set of Inverness-shire Constabulary Personnel Registers, I was able (mind you, it took a long time!) to compile a listing of all the officers in the photo - and where they were stationed (as at October 1900).
I almost managed to work out everybody's shoulder number too - but not quite, as some of the beards are obscuring the numbers!
So here's the list of everybody in the photo and where they were stationed.
Inverness-shire Constabulary: 1899-1900-1901 (Total: 74)
Surname, Forename, (and Rank + Station as at 10/1900)
MCHARDY Alexander, Chief Constable, INVERNESS
CHISHOLM Hugh, Superintendent, INVERNESS
BOYD Alexander, Inspector, PORTREE
CHISHOLM Alexander, Inspector, FORT WILLIAM
HENDERSON Donald, Inspector, LOCHMADDY
WEBSTER Keith, Inspector, INVERNESS
FRASER Simon, Sergeant, KINGUSSIE
MACCULLOCH John, Sergeant, DUNVEGAN
MACDONALD Colin, Sergeant, BEAULY
MACINNES William, Sergeant, FORT WILLIAM
MACLAREN Angus, Sergeant (12/99), INVERNESS
MITCHELL George, Sergeant, INVERNESS
PHILIP James, Sergeant, LOCHBOISDALE
AITKEN James, Constable, LAGGAN
ANDERSON John, Constable, NETHYBRIDGE
CAMERON Alexander, Constable, EDINBANE
CAMERON Ewen, Constable, ISLEORNSAY
CAMPBELL Donald, Constable, KNOYDART
CUMMING John, Constable, PORTREE
FRASER Donald, Constable, INVERGARRY
FRASER George, Constable, GAIRLOCHY
FRASER James, Constable, AVIEMORE
FRASER Peter, Constable, GLENELG
FRASER Thomas I, Constable, OBBE
GILLIES Donald, Constable, DAVIOT
GRANT Duncan, Constable, CLACHAN
GRANT Peter, Constable, INVERMORISTON
HIRD John, Constable, FORT WILLIAM
LAVERTON Joseph, Constable, DRUMNADROCHIT
MACARTHUR Malcolm, Constable, BENBECULA
MACBEATH Alexander, Constable, BALLIFEARY
MACDONALD Alexander, Constable, MALLAIG
MACDONALD Angus, Constable, LOCHMADDY
MACDONALD Duncan, Constable, ONICH
MACDONALD Ewen, Constable, DAVIOT
MACDONALD James, Constable, FORT WILLIAM
MACDONALD John, Constable, SPEAN BRIDGE
MACDONALD Thomas, Constable, STAFFIN
MACDONALD William, Constable, CANNICH
MACGRUER Thomas, Constable, FORT WILLIAM
MACGRUER William, Constable, PORTREE
MACKAY James, Constable, ERROGIE
MACKAY Robert, Constable, KINGUSSIE
MACKENZIE Donald, Constable, BROADFORD
MACKENZIE Evan, Constable, INVERNESS
MACKENZIE William, Constable, TARBERT
MACKINNON John, Constable, INVERNESS
MACLAREN Donald, Constable, NEWTONMORE
MACLAREN William, Constable, UIG
MACLENNAN Alexander, Constable, LENTRAN
MACLENNAN Donald, Constable, ARISAIG
MACLENNAN Duncan, Constable, MALLAIG
MACLENNAN Hugh, Constable, INVERNESS
MACLEOD William, Constable, CAMPBELLTOWN
MACMASTER Donald, Constable, BARRA
MACNIVEN John, Constable, BOAT OF GARTEN
MACRAE John, Constable, COLBOST
MACVICAR Alexander, Constable, DORES
MELVILLE Donald, Constable, PORTREE
MURCHISON William, Constable, GLENFINNAN
MURRAY Alexander, Constable, INVERNESS (appt 10/00)
ROSS John, Constable, BANAVIE
SHEARER Hugh, Constable, CARRBRIDGE
SINCLAIR Duncan, Constable, KINLOCHAILORT
SINCLAIR Neil, Constable, TOMATIN
SMITH John, Constable, TOMNACROSS
SUTHERLAND William, Constable, FORT AUGUSTUS
TAIT Sinclair, Constable, STONEYBRIDGE
YOUNG James, Constable, CARBOST
=-=-=-=-=-
BARRON John, Constable(ex), ERROGIE (Left 08/99)
CAMPBELL Alexander, Constable, HQ (apptd 06/01)
MACKENZIE John, Constable(ex), GLENFINNAN(Left 5/99)
MACKENZIE Murdo, Constable, Recalled to Army 10/98-8/02
WILKINSON Donald, Constable(Temp), BRIDGE OF OICH(to 06/01)
Baddesley Clinton is not one the grandest of houses, nor is it filled with rare works of art, but having been owned by one family, the Ferrers, since the 16th century and maintained largely intact and original, it is a rare example of the average early-modern home of the lesser gentry. Unlike such mansions as nearby Coughton Court, Baddesley Clinton is relatively small, even cozy, and one can easily imagine the life of the people who lived here. It is best known for being the home of the Jesuit Henry Garnet for almost 14 years, and the existence of several priest hides conceived and built by Nicholas Owen.
The Clintons settled here in the thirteenth century, when it was called just Baddesley, and added their name to the place. They were responsible for the digging of the moat that you see above. It was eventually sold in 1438 to John Brome, a wealthy lawyer, and the Bromes built most of the east and west sides of the house.
John Brome was the Under Treasurer of England but a Lancastrian, and when Henry VI was deposed in 1461 by the Yorkist claimant Edward IV, Brome lost all of his court appointments. He later quarreled with John Herthill, Steward to Richard "the Kingmaker", Earl of Warwick, and Herthill murdered him in 1468 on the porch of the Whitefriars Church in London. Brome's second son, Nicholas, who inherited the estate, eventually avenged his father's murder by killing Herthill in 1471.
Nicholas Brome seems to have had a taste for violence. According to Henry Ferrers, a later owner of the house, it was soon after inheriting Baddesley Clinton that Nicholas 'slew the minister of Baddesley Church findinge him in his plor (parlour) chockinge his wife under ye chinne, and to expiatt these bloody offenses and crimes he built the steeple and raysed the church body ten foote higher". He was pardoned for this killing by both the King and the Pope. Nicholas seems also to have developed a taste for building, and is thought to have been responsible for the building of much of the earliest part of the house. Baddesley Clinton passed into the hands of the Ferrers family in 1517, through the marriage of Nicholas Brome's daughter, Constance, to Sir Edward Ferrers.
The most interesting of the Ferrers is Henry Ferrers (1549-1633), the great-grandson of Sir Edward Ferrers, and contemporary with the times of the Gunpowder Plot. He inherited the property in 1564, and lived through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, dying in the reign of Charles I. He carried out extensive building, including the wing that contains the Great Hall, as well as adding the Great Parlour above the existing entranceway. He also installed much oak paneling and mantels that are still there as well.
Henry Ferrers was an antiquarian, and spent a lifetime collecting historical information, much of which was later used by Sir William Dugdale in the 'Antiquities of Warwickshire'. This interest of his can be seen by the enormous amount of heraldic glass and devices throughout the house. He was trained in the law, and admitted to the Middle Temple in 1572. He may also have served a term as an MP for Cirencester in 1593.
After the death of Henry Ferrers, the fortunes of the Ferrers family fluctuated through periods of heavy taxation such as during the Civil War and in the early eighteenth century, followed by attempts by some generations to maintain and improve the property in better times. The last Ferrers in the direct male line, Marmion Edward Ferrers (1813-1884), was so poor that Lady Chatterton, the aunt of his wife Rebecca, and her husband, Edward Heneage Deering, had to come and live with him to share the expense. These two were only married because of a misunderstanding. It is said that Deering came to Lady Chatterly to ask permission to pay address to her niece, but she thought it was a proposal to her, and accepted. Deering, although she was old enough to be his mother, was too chivalrous to set the story straight!
The estate passed down through Marmion Edward Ferrer's nephew through several relatives, and it was Mr. Thomas Ferrers-Walker who eventually sold the house to the Government, after which it became part of the National Trust. The Ferrers Archive is kept at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Henry Ferrers was also a devout Catholic, but a cautious one and was never convicted for recusancy. He must have been aware of the activities of the Vaux sisters, who rented the house from him in the 1590's in order to secretly shelter Father Henry Garnet and other priests, and to be able to conduct catholic services. Soon after they rented the house, Anne Vaux had Nicholas Owen build secret hiding places, including one created out of the sewer and the moat.
A spectacular raid on Baddesley in October 1591 was recorded both by Father John Gerard in his Autobiography of an Elizabethan, and also by Father Henry Garnet in a letter to his Jesuit superior, Aquaviva. Several priests, including Garnet and Gerard, as well as lay assistants had risen early and were preparing to leave the house, when it was surrounded and all the approach roads blocked by pursuviants. The stable-boys, knowing that so many horses saddled and ready to go would be suspicious, armed themselves with farm implements and blocked the pursuviants attempt at violent entry. This bought some time for those inside the house, as the pursuviants had to resort to requests, and led them to believe that the lady of the house had not yet arisen. Those outside had to wait patiently, albeit not quietly, while those inside were quickly hiding away the priests, Catholic vestments, and all other signs of the presence of a Catholic priest, including the overturning of their mattresses so that the pursuviants could not feel the warmth.
The priests stood in the hiding place in the moat, ankle-deep in cold water for over four hours while the pursuviants tore through the house, although their attempts at intimidation seemed to have far outweighed their skills in searching. Anne Vaux said "here was a searcher pounding the walls in unbelievable fury, there another shifting side-tables, turning over beds. Yet, when any of them touched with their hand or foot the actual place where some sacred object was hidden, he paid not the slightest attention to the most obvious evidence of a contrivance."
The searchers turned up nothing, and eventually left after being paid off by Anne Vaux with twelve gold pieces. As Gerard later said, "Yes, that is the pitiful lot of Catholics when men come with a warrant ... it is the Catholics, not the men who send them, who have to pay. As if it were not enough to suffer, they have to pay for their suffering."
You can still inspect these hiding places today, and we must say they are not for those who are claustrophobic or faint of heart. Until you actually see them, it is hard to imagine the cramped, damp, dark and tomb-like conditions these priests endured.
The first of these is a lath and plaster hutch in the roof above a closet off the bedroom in the gatehouse block. It measures six feet three inches by four feet, and is three feet nine inches high. It contains two wooden benches and is lined with fine hair-plaster.
In the corner of the kitchen, where a garderobe once existed, you can see through to the medieval drain where the hiding place used by Father Gerard and Father Garnet was located. At the time, this could only be accessed through the garderobe shaft in the floor of the Sacristy above. A hiding space beneath the floor of the Library was accessed through the fireplace in the Great Parlour, and can now be viewed from the Moat Room. It was in the Library Room that Nicholas Brome was said to have murdered the priest, and it is reputed to be haunted.
For an excellent account of the priest holes and the work of Nicholas Owen at Baddesley Clinton, the article Elizabethan Priest Holes : III - East Anglia, Baddesley Clinton, Hindlip by Michael Hodgetts, and published in Recusant History, is a must read.
The house itself consists almost entirely of building done by either the Bromes in the fifteenth century or by Henry Ferrers in the sixteenth, and although much repair and alteration work has been carried out inside the house, the panelling, fireplaces and heraldic glass throughout the house all date from the work of Henry Ferrers.
Originally quadrangular in shape, the property today consists of only three blocks, the east including the gatehouse and the Great Parlour, the south containing the Hall, and the west containing the kitchen. The gatehouse and kitchen wing are of grey sandstone, whereas the Hall, which was reconstructed in the 18th century, is of brick.
The crenellated gatehouse is one of the house's most interesting features. The lower part with the gun ports was built by Nicholas Brome in the late fifteenth century, and is thought originally to have had a drawbridge. The upper part was re-formed by Henry Ferrers to accommodate the Great Parlour. The brick bridge was built in the early eighteenth century, and the crenelations added in the nineteenth century. The massive carved oak door in the gatehouse leading through to the courtyard dates from Nicholas Brome.
The present owners are still undertaking restoration work to enable all the documented priest hides and trapdoors to be made available for viewing, this work includes part of the moat tunnel complex that is presently plugged in order to prevent midges from penetrating into the Sacristy and bedrooms
Baddesley Clinton, although still a private dwelling was sold to the Government and passed to the National Trust in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982.
The above was copied from "The gunpowder plot" website.
Great to place to visit. If only there had been some sun!
Senior Airman Nathan Tierney (left) and Staff Sgt. Eddie Evans return an aircraft after an in-flight emergency Dec. 10, 2009, at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. Airman Tierney and Sergeant Evans are A-10 crash recovery technicians with the 451st Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron maintenance flight. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Timothy Taylor)
Well maintained house in a Delta park. This was the home of New Westminster born actor Raymond Burr. House was moved to the park in order to preserve the history.
2014 Bugatti Veyron standard ran a million dollars and could reach a top speed of 253 mph speed it can maintain for 12 minutes before all the fuel is gone.Power is transmitted to the road via all four wheels and a used car transmission.The seven speed dual clutch automated could reach 60 mph and...
Disabled Army veteran, new farmer and owner-operator of Prado Recreation Inc. Ruben Llamas, leases more than 585 acres from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where his family and employees farm more than half of that and maintain the rest as a dog training facility, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA Natural Resources and Conservation Service NRCS has helped him improve the health of the land and the profitability of the farm with the replacement of six new tractors, a loader, and technical assistance in the basin of the Prado Dam area, in Chino, CA, on Oct. 21, 2022. The facility is 36 miles east of Los Angeles, 11 miles south of Ontario, in what is known as the Inland Empire.
Sergeant Llamas served in the U.S. Army for 13 years as a Combat Engineer and a Scout. He was assigned to the U.S. Army 578th Brigade Engineer Battalion and the California Army National Guard 18th Calvery Regiment. He and his wife have six children; two are serving in the U.S. Army, one in the U.S. Coast Guard, and one is considering enlisting herself.
The basin’s range of environments and topography supports a wide variety of training grounds for sporting dogs, rescue tracking dogs, obedience training, and the ability to provide kennel facilities and the maintenance of waterfowl habitats and outdoor recreation areas. The farm fields of grasses and natural meadows provide nesting. Their seeds feed migrating birds near a hunting club and the broader wetlands. Hunting dog trainers use the forests, fields, meadows, ponds, and islands to train dogs to find game birds for hunters.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the approximately 4,500-acres Prado Dam area. Their lease is for more than 500 acres near the dam and Highway 71.
They purchased the business 16 years ago. The land ranges from farm fields to wetlands and woodlands. Three counties with about 15 million people surround the area.
The farm produces alfalfa, corn, and other forage crops for silage sold to local dairies. Winter crops are wheat, winter wheat, oats, and ryegrass. In the summer, they grow sorghum, corn, milo, and various types of grass. All the fields at different stages of growth are used for hunting dog training, as it provides cover for waterfowl and challenges to rescue dogs in training.
Ruben Llamas is a new farmer who wants to be as profitable as possible and develop his best practices. To help him, Llamas discovered the USDA Natural Resources and Conservation Service online at usda.gov. He called the nearest NRCS Field Office in Redlands, CA. District Conservationist Tomas Aguilar-Campos answered the phone and immediately helped him with the information and ways to begin networking. To better understand Llamas’s farm and conservation needs Campos went to see him at the farm in the Prado Dam basin. Llamas was hesitant to provide information to the government and work with them but decided to try it. He now compares his experience with USDA to be similar to a bank customer and their banker.
The business came with 40-year-old tractors that were unreliable, produced higher emissions, and were expensive to maintain. Thanks to the USDA Environmental Quality Incentives Program EQIP and the USDA assistance with the application process, he qualified for the replacement of six tractors and a loader. Now, there is no problem operating any of them at any time. The robust and reliable equipment accomplishes twice the work in half the time and does it with 30 percent less fuel, says Llamas.
NRCS EQIP provides technical and financial assistance to producers to address natural resource concerns and deliver environmental benefits such as improved water and air quality, conserved ground and surface water, increased soil health and reduced soil erosion and sedimentation, improved or created wildlife habitat, and mitigation against drought and increasing weather volatility.
Equally as old were the irrigation systems. So, next, the pump and mainline, and distribution pipe needed improvement. To test the system Tomas and another specialist came to test the irrigation system. He recommended larger lines and a smaller pump for lower energy costs and better efficiency.
“The field representative, they’re always there, ready to help, says Llamas. With whatever question I have, they will help me.”
During the winter, the lower wetlands and farm fields become flooded with rainwater. The water attracts local and migratory birds. They come to eat, rest and leave the soil richer from their time there.
In the lowest field, seasonal flooding made it difficult to farm. Aguilar-Campos responded by asking a USDA soil specialist to examine the land. Compost was the recommendation, resulting in consistent farming and increased yields.
Because of the varying soils, Aguilar-Campos had a soil analysis performed. It showed that composting would help. The compost revitalized the soil to the point that certain crops needed 30 percent less water, and corn required 18 percent less water. Another result is that weed suppression has improved, so chemical use is down from an already sparing use.
Ruben Llamas says, “It’s been a really great relationship. I mean, I got seven pieces of equipment, so it’s been really, really good.”
For more information about EQIP, go to nrcs.usda.gov/programs-initiatives/eqip-environmental-quality-incentives
For more information about NRCS Conservation Practice 533 Pumping Plant please see efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/api/CPSFile/14941/533_NC_CPS_Pumping_Plant_2011
For more information about NRCS Conservation Practice 430, Irrigation Pipe, please see nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Irrigation_Pipeline_430_Overview_9_2020.pdf
For more information about NRCS Conservation Practice 443 Irrigation System please see nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Irrigation_System_Surface_And_Subsurface_443_Overview.pdf
USDA Media by Lance Cheung.
"Rittenhouse Square is a neighborhood, including a public park, in Center City, Pennsylvania. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century.
The neighborhood is among the highest-income urban neighborhoods in the country. Together with Fitler Square, the Rittenhouse neighborhood and the square comprise the Rittenhouse–Fitler Historic District.
Rittenhouse Square Park is maintained by the non-profit group The Friends of Rittenhouse Square. The square cuts off 19th Street at Walnut Street and also at a half-block above Manning Street. Its boundaries are 18th Street to the east, Walnut St. to the north, Rittenhouse Square West (a north–south boundary street), and Rittenhouse Square South (an east–west boundary street), making the park approximately two short blocks on each side.
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City, and the 68th-largest city in the world. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and world's 68th-largest metropolitan region, with 6.245 million residents as of 2020. The city's population as of the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's independence. Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party, preserved the Liberty Bell, and hosted the Second Continental Congress during which the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, which historian Joseph Ellis has described as "the most potent and consequential words in American history". Once the Revolutionary War commenced, both the Battle of Germantown and the Siege of Fort Mifflin were fought within Philadelphia's city limits. The U.S. Constitution was later ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, when it was surpassed by New York City, and served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions during and following the American Revolution, including from 1790 to 1800 while the new national capital of Washington, D.C. was under construction.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Philadelphia emerged as a major national industrial center and railroad hub. The city’s blossoming industrial sector attracted European immigrants, predominantly from Germany and Ireland, the two largest reported ancestry groups in the city as of 2015. In the 20th century, immigrant waves from Italy and elsewhere in Southern Europe arrived. Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, Philadelphia became a leading destination for African Americans in the Great Migration. In the 20th century, Puerto Rican Americans moved to the city in large numbers. Between 1890 and 1950, Philadelphia's population doubled to 2.07 million. Philadelphia has since attracted immigrants from East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
With 18 four-year universities and colleges, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. As of 2021, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was the nation's ninth-largest metropolitan economy with a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479 billion. Philadelphia is the largest center of economic activity in Pennsylvania and the broader multi-state Delaware Valley region; the city is home to five Fortune 500 corporate headquarters as of 2022. The Philadelphia skyline, which includes several globally renowned commercial skyscrapers, is expanding, primarily with new residential high-rise condominiums. The city and the Delaware Valley are a biotechnology and venture capital hub; and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by NASDAQ, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation, and the city's multimodal transport and logistics infrastructure, including Philadelphia International Airport, the PhilaPort seaport, freight rail infrastructure, roadway traffic capacity, and warehouse storage space, are all expanding.
Philadelphia is a national cultural hub, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is 2,052 acres (830 ha), representing one of the nation's largest contiguous urban parks and the 45th largest urban park in the world. The city is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolution-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42 million domestic tourists who spent $6.8 billion, representing $11 billion in total economic impact to the city and surrounding Pennsylvania counties.
With five professional sports teams and a hugely loyal fan base, the city is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.
Philadelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans. In 2021, Time magazine named Philadelphia one of the world's greatest 100 places." - info from Wikipedia.
The fall of 2022 I did my 3rd major cycling tour. I began my adventure in Montreal, Canada and finished in Savannah, GA. This tour took me through the oldest parts of Quebec and the 13 original US states. During this adventure I cycled 7,126 km over the course of 2.5 months and took more than 68,000 photos. As with my previous tours, a major focus was to photograph historic architecture.
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The Belge government has advanced a proposal to Unesco for the designation of this panorama as a Unesco world heritage site. whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5364/ The painting and the round bldg. housing it were completed in 1912. The proposal maintains that "the Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo is one of the most important witnesses to the panorama phenomenon in the world." But I like the more finely detailed and colourful one at Sevastopol much better. www.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/4286380753/in/photostr... Importantly (for Unesco's consideration) it's older too, dating from 1904-1905. But it was damaged in the war and I don't know how much the Soviets have restored it. But what's really something is that a larger, older (by 20 yr.s) panorama of finer quality has been closed to the public since 2018 (I got to see it in 2016, I'll upload shots when I catch up with this stream) and it's here in Canada (!) at Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre, Quebec, a 360 degree scene of New Testament Jerusalem from Golgotha painted in Munich, and it's pristine. Until 2 yrs ago it was exhibited in its own rotunda by the Trans-Canada (hwy.) and was marketed with the cheesy name 'the Cyclorama' which has to be part of the problem. www.cycloramadejerusalem.com/en/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU9Hm8Mrvo8 But I ask what's wrong with us, that we have a much earlier surviving panorama from the great age of panoramas (they were a big fad) and which is arguably superior to that at Braine l'Alleud, and not only is it not the subject of a proposal to Unesco, but it's been shuttered.
- Here in Ontario we have 2 Unesco sites, the Rideau canal and Pimachiowin Aki, the latter designated only in 2018, a vast tract of the boreal forest in the west (in a huge border-straddling site shared with Manitoba), the ancestral homeland of the Anishinaabeg and under First Nations management. But I ask "only 2?" (There are currently 22 designated Canadian sites on the list; 6! in Alberta incl. 1 shared with B.C. and 1 with the N.W.T., 2 more in B.C. incl. 1 shared with the Yukon and Alaska, 1 more in the Yukon, 1 more in the N.W.T., 3 in Quebec, 4 in N & L, 3 in N.S., and none in N.B., P.E.I., Sask., & Nunavut.) A list follows of sites and sights in Ontario with good potential for Unesco designation.:
- Toronto's 'Gooderham & Worts distillery' was the most intact Victorian industrial heritage site in North America before it was gutted less than 20 yrs. back for shops and condos. I was told that it would've been a candidate for Unesco designation if it had been preserved in the state it was in as recently as the 90s! It wasn't to be what with developers' $$ and our shady politics.
- But we have Moose Factory up on James Bay, the 2nd HBC trading post (1673), but much more intact and, importantly, more 'representative' than the first, Rupert House, 1668, a bit further east along the bay in Quebec, aka 'Waskaganish' today, both on my bucket list. (The remaining historic bldg.s in its 'Centennial park' date from the 19th cent., incl. St. Thomas Anglican church, the powder magazine, the HBC staff house, etc., but I think that should be fine with Unesco.)
- Point Pelee is an important stopover on one of the greatest flyways for migratory birds and Monarch butterflies in N.A. (which I toured the once in late 2002) www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ZjRzqLDOw I heard or read once that it's the greatest 'flyway' north of Costa Rica. Birds fly south across the southern end of Lake Erie from the tip of the point after flying SW along the northern shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. It's a mecca for birdwatchers.
- Petroglyphs provincial park at Nephton near Peterborough is a gimme. Petroglyph sites all over the world have been designated, and this is the largest known concentration of indigenous rock carvings in Canada and the best preserved site representing a culture that ranged over a vast territory in what is now Ontario 900 yr.s ago or earlier. I've toured it en route to Bon Echo, but photography of the carvings is forbidden. The park is often open after dark in summer when lights are shone on the carvings from an angle which really makes them pop, or so I've been told.
- Killarney park and the Georgian Bay Islands provincial park both represent a pristine natural ecosystem on the Canadian shield which could be 'representative', and it helps that both are so beautiful. Killarney's famous for its fall colours, and the view from a height at 'the Crack' in the fall often features in calendars (I think, or it should).
- Sites at Temagami include the "White Bear forest", the "White Bear trail" and the largest stand of old growth white and red pine in Canada.
- Packs of Eastern wolves in Algonquin provincial park (we referred to them as 'Timber wolves' in the 70s) have prowled and howled there since time immemorial and didn't have to be reintroduced as they've been stateside. Unfortunately, they're under threat once again, this time from the coyote, an invasive species. Some coyotes moved north some decades ago and interbred with wolves in the park (some ecologists maintain that the Eastern wolf subspecies is the result of much earlier interbreeding /b/ the Gray wolf and the coyote; the geneaology of all North American wolf and coyote subspecies is hotly debated en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_wolf ) which then became a fountain of the new hybrid 'coy-wolf', which has arrived and how in and @ Toronto and southern Ontario and spread throughout southern Quebec, the Maritimes and south down the Eastern Seaboard. Many ecologists consider this to be a good thing apart from the threat to the genetic integrity of the Eastern wolf subspecies. (That threat [a result of human hunting and trapping o/s protected areas, which leads to genetic introgression with the coyote due to a lack of mates] won't be a selling point to the Parisians at Unesco, quite the contrary if they're important to the application unless it includes a plan to protect them.)
- Bon Echo provincial park is home to the Bon Echo or Mazinaw rock (a cliff-face really) on deep, narrow Lake Mazinaw with its well-preserved pictographs (First Nations paintings in red ochre, the greatest collection in North America - !) an art gallery to tour by canoe with images of Nanabush et al. at a site considered sacred for many centuries if not millenia, another gimme. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTyDonk5cI
- Big, beautiful, perfectly preserved Fort Henry in Kingston (1830s), all in white limestone should be a contender (or should the prize go to the Halifax citadel? The fort at Quebec city is included with the old town in one designation; can there be only 1 British colonial fort on the list? They were built in different periods.) Two well-preserved Martello towers in town could be included in the designation.
- Fort York here in Toronto has the largest collection of original, intact bldg.s built or rebuilt during and for the War of 1812 in North America. The explosion of the powder magazine set by retreating Brits and Canadians during the American attack on the city was the largest on North American soil to that point in history en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_expl.... , resulting in the deaths of Zebulon Pike (after whom Pikeville, Penn., and Pikeville and Pike Co., Kentucky were named) and more American troops at once than all the Canadians and Brits killed in the battle for the city, and so enraged the Americans that they pillaged the city for 9 days. But they lacked supplies and abandoned the city, and the fort was promptly rebuilt by the Brits in the midst of the war. It includes the remains of the oldest kitchen in Toronto.
- There's that lovely, rolling north shore of Lake Superior, with its views from a height out over the lake, an inspiration for Lawren Harris. Not enough people know how beautiful that stretch is, the road from just north of 'the Soo' to Agawa bay in particular. That stretch offers one of the most beautiful road trips on the planet in the fall (@ Oct. 1). A proposal for designation could and should include the famous pictographs at Agawa bay with Mishepezhu, the underwater panther (which could be the most famous indigenous work of art in Canada east of British Columbia), Mishikenabek (sp?), etc.
- Is Niagara Falls too built up with the Clifton Hill cheese-fest? (I love all the fudge shops, but would the Parisians from Unesco?) It is what it is, a mind-blowing world wonder. The Horseshoe falls on the Ontario side is the largest continuous single-drop waterfall by volume anywhere on the planet.
- I envision a collective designation of sites on both sides of the Ontario-New York border, and possibly in Michigan too, representing the history of the 'Underground Railroad', incl. a preserved hiding place in a church in Buffalo (!), the 'Salem Chapel' attended by Harriet Tubman in Ste. Catharines, ON, and possibly the cabin in Dresden, ON which was the home of Josiah Henson, Beecher Stowe's inspiration for 'Uncle Tom' in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. (That book hasn't aged so well, but it was important to the history of the abolition movement stateside.)
- The 'Royal Chapel of the Mohawks' in Brantford, the oldest church in Ontario (1785), has designation potential as it represents the movement of Six Nations populations west across the border, their settlement in Ontario, and the early, colonial history of the reserve following the British defeat in the American Revolution. Important historical figures are buried in its churchyard. It could be included in a collective designation with sites in the Finger Lakes region and in Georgia and Oklahoma representing the history of the 'Six Nations' and of the Cherokee and other First nations and their (often tragic) efforts to cope and coexist with encroaching communities of European immigrants and their descendants.
- The Davidite 'Temple of Peace' in Sharon north of Toronto (1825-'31) is an unusual jewel of a church, and a gimme for its architecture, history and level of preservation.
- But we have only 2 designated sites and not a one on Canada's tentative list, which currently has 10: 3 in B.C., 3 in Nunavut, 2 in the Yukon, 1 in Sask., and 1 in N & L. The westerners and northerners get it. Btw, we have 6 top-notch Canadian paleontology sites on the Unesco list (although the Burgess Shale is included in the Rocky Mtn.s parks site). So 1/4 of our world heritage sites are about fossils. The relative absence of Ontario from the list is a function of our ignorance of what we have and of its appeal to visitors and/or our lack of interest in trying to appeal to a broader range of them. Europeans and all types love heritage and historic and prehistoric sites, and anything representative or superlative in natural sites, and go out of their way to tour them, something Albertans have learned these past 40 years. (Again, Alberta's home to 6 of the 22 Canadian sites, > 1/4.) They stumped for designation of the 'Writing-on-stone' Blackfoot site, where there's less to be seen than at 'Petroglyphs' here which, again, isn't even on the tentative list. In Ontario we have more to offer than baseball and hockey games and musical theatre and film festivals (not to say that we don't do well with that).
- There are also several sites and sights with Unesco potential written all over them in Manitoba (the depot at York Factory on Hudson's Bay for one, indubitably! and the red-sided-garter-snake dens in Narcisse, see my photo) and in New Brunswick (lovely, historic St.-Andrews-by-the-Sea? How about a site representative of Loyalist architectural heritage in that town or in St. John?). One risk in seeking to nominate parts of or a piece of the Bay of Fundy, such as the famous and photogenic Hopewell Capes, as a site in light of that Bay being home to 'the highest tides in the world' is that it risks revealing that it's not. Tides at Ungava Bay are higher (in season), and so Quebec could seek designation for Ungava on the same basis and dispute the claim. (Or would they? Ungava is practically inaccessible to tourists, and any publicity could hurt NB and NS.) At least both Bays are in Canada. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh46vxgru88
- Another example of how clueless Ontarians can be as to local heritage: 2nd only to the telephone, or to the long distance phone call (first made to or from Brantford by A.G. Bell), and not including natural features like the Great Lakes or Niagara Falls, I can't think of a more popular or successful or renowned thing on an international, national, or provincial scale that has its point of origin in Ontario, be it cultural or otherwise, than the McIntosh apple. It was first grown by John McIntosh on his farm in Dundela, ON, @ 50-60 clicks SE of Ottawa just north of the 401. (I could be biased. It's my favourite apple. I was raised on it.) But that farm receives no interest or assistance with its preservation from any level of government, despite that the very tree on which the first McIntosh apple grew still stands there.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbQS--BfCaw
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSHB4wk1bk
- There's some more competition.: again, Harriott Beecher Stowe based 'Uncle Tom' on Josiah Henson of Dresden, ON; the Huron Carol, an increasingly popular addition to the Christmas caroling canon, was written and first sung at Jesuit missions here in the 1640s www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-VIGkWEbe0 ; and the first commercial oil well in N.A. (while not something to be proud of), and the first anywhere o/s Poland, was at Petrolia, ON (1858).
Chassis n° 12283
- Owned by Mr Fornas since December 2014
- Maintained by Ferrari specialists Dino Sport
- Engine rebuilt in August 2017 (bills and photographs available)
- 26,652 kilometres recorded
Bonhams : The Zoute Sale
Important Collectors' Motor Cars
The Zoute Grand Prix Gallery
Estimated : € 200.000 - 220.000
Sold for € 258.750
Zoute Grand Prix Car Week 2025
Knokke - Zoute
België - Belgium
October 2025
By the mid-1960s, 50 percent of all Ferraris produced were being built with four seats, and following on from the success of its first such model, the 250 GTE of 1960, Ferrari introduced the 330 GT 2+2 in January 1964. The newcomer's steel tube chassis was 2" longer in the wheelbase than that of its predecessor and featured independent front suspension and a live rear axle. Beneath the 330's more-spacious Pininfarina coachwork was a 300bhp, 4-litre V12 coupled to a four-speed overdrive gearbox. Its replacement, the 365 GT 2+2, was launched at the Paris Salon in October 1967. Sleekly styled in the manner of the limited edition 500 Superfast, the 365 GT 2+2 was the most refined Ferrari to date.
Based on that of the contemporary 330 GTC, the chassis was made up of Ferrari's familiar combination of oval and round steel tubing, and as well as featuring independent suspension all round (for the first time on a Ferrari 2+2) boasted Koni's hydro-pneumatic self-levelling system at the rear. Further refinements included mounting the engine and drivetrain in rubber bushes to insulate the car's occupants from noise and vibration, and offering ZF power-assisted steering and air conditioning as standard equipment. Developing 320bhp in its 365 GT incarnation, the well-proven 4.4-litre V12 engine was coupled to a five-speed gearbox, while the car's blistering performance - top speed 150mph, 0-60mph in 7.0 seconds - was restrained by Girling ventilated discs all round. A total of 800 cars had been completed by the time production ceased in 1971.
Endowed with fine handling and a supple ride, the 365GT 2+2 was rated by Car magazine as "the most civilised Ferrari yet". Impressed by the car's build quality, Car & Driver reckoned it, "prototypical of the new Ferraris where everything fits and falls together accurately, as needs must if Ferrari is to survive in the US market". The respected American motoring magazine found the overall effect to be "one of a very real and serious, ultra luxurious, high-speed touring machine," yet no compromises had been made in the handling department: the 365 GT 2+2 remained very much a driver's car in the traditional Ferrari manner. Road & Track agreed: "Out on the open road this car really comes into its own, as does any Ferrari; the power steering makes it seem light on its feet and the giant Michelin XVR tyres furnish high cornering power with little fuss."
This elegant Ferrari 365 GT 2+2 was purchased by Mr Fornas in December 2014 from the well-known French classic car specialist, Cecil Cars (see bills on file). Since purchase Mr Fornas has had the car regularly maintained by Ferrari specialist Dino Sport in Bezons, France (bills on file). At 23,410 kilometres the following components were replaced: rear shock absorbers; fuel pumps; fuel lines; electrical wiring (for the fuel pumps); and radiator fans. In September 2016, the gearbox was overhauled, and a new clutch installed. In August 2017, the engine was dismantled for a full overhaul, in the course of which new pistons were fitted, for a total of €46,781.96 (bills and photographic record on file). Also, some minor cosmetic work was undertaken by Cecil Car's workshop with some attention to the wiring. Since then, the car has been regularly maintained by Mr Fornas' local specialist. The current odometer reading is 26,652 kilometres. As well as the aforementioned documentation, the Ferrari comes with a detailed and copiously illustrated Rapport d'Expertise from Michel Gicquel, which was commissioned by Mr Fornas in November 2016. A wonderful opportunity to acquire a very well cared for example of this highly desirable Ferrari Gran Turismo.
Alice Gast, President, Imperial College London, United Kingdom; W. Patrick McCray, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; L. Rafael Reif, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA; Martin Stratmann, President, Max-Planck Institute, Germany; Andrew Thompson, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Proteus Digital Health, USA and Joe Palca, Science Correspondent, NPR, USA speaking during the Session "Maintaining Innovation" at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 20, 2017. .Copyright by World Economic Forum / Manuel Lopez
The Breakers, the Gilded Age summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II at 44 Ochre Point Avenue, is the most visited attraction in Rhode Island. Part of a 13-acre estate on the seagirt cliffs, it maintains a commanding position facing east overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, the home was constructed between 1893 and 1895 at the then-astronomical cost of more than $7 million.
The Breakers Mansion, regarded as the grandest of Newport's summer "cottages", served as a symbol of the Vanderbilt family’s social and financial preeminence. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt established the family fortune in steamships and later in the New York Central Railroad. His grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, became Chairman and President of the New York Central Railroad system in 1885. That same year he purchased the Breakers, a wood-framed mansion from Pierre Lorillard IV. After it burned down in 1892, Vanderbilt commissioned Hunt, in what would be his last project, who directed an international team of craftsmen and artisans to create a new 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo, with Beaux Arts and Victorian elements, inspired by the 16th century palaces of Genoa and Turin. Allard and Sons of Paris assisted Hunt with furnishings and fixtures, Austro-American sculptor Karl Bitter designed relief sculpture, Boston architect Ogden Codman decorated the family quarters, and Ernest Bowdtich, a Boston engineer, landscape artist, and student of Frederic Law Olmsted, designed the grounds.
Vanderbilt insisted that The Breakers be made as fireproof as possible. Steel trusses support the masonry and exterior Indiana limestone blocks. The enormous heating plant was set beneath the caretaker’s cottage and joined to the house by a wide tunnel. The finished floors are of marble, tile, terrazzo, and mosaic.
The 250 foot by 120 foot dimensions of the five-story mansion are aligned symmetrically around a central Great Hall. Hunt based the Hall on the concept of rooms grouped around an open courtyard or cortile, but covered them as a concession to climate. He did, however, maintain the structured symmetry, with rooms of the first and second floors opening onto a 45-foot high central space. The walls of the Hall are made of carved Caen limestone from the coast of France and adorned with plaques of rare marbles ranging from the pink marble of Africa to the greens of Italian origin. Elaborately carved pilasters decorated with acorns and oak leaves support a massive carved and gilt cornice which surrounds a ceiling painted to depict a windswept sky. On the ceiling are four blue-green medallions bearing the acorn and oak leaf, a Vanderbilt family symbol representing strength and longevity.
A rounded bay projects from the South wing, accommodating the huge oval Music Room inside and overlooking the South Parterre. The ocean-facing East façade joins the north and south wings with a two-story arched loggia in the Palladian manner—the lower one with a vaulted mosaic ceiling and the upper painted to resemble canopies against the sky. The spandrels of the loggia arches are decorated with figures of the four seasons of the year. The wall between the Hall and the loggias is almost entirely of glass, affording a view of the ocean from inside.
The Main Entrance is approached through by 30-foot high wrought iron gateways, which are part of a 12-foot-high Genoese-style limestone and iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The gateway was crafted by the William Jackson Company and topped with elaborate scrollwork, including the acorn and oak leaf family symbol surrounding the initials of Cornelius Vanderbilt. A gravel drive leads to the large porte-cochére of the northwest facade. Flanking the entrance drive are four bronze lamp posts, decorated with molded figures executed by Henri Bonnard of New York, mounted on three-foot limestone pedestals with 4-globed bronze standards 13 feet high.
The "Cottage,", located between the side gate and the main house was used as a children's playhouse. A good example of Victorian architecture on a small scale, it was built by Robert Swain Peabody and John Goddard Stearns, the architects of the original Breakers House, whose Queen Anne Revival style elements were in keeping with the original design.
Cornelius Vanderbilt died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused from a second stroke in 1899 at the age of 56, leaving the Breakers to his wife, Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt. She outlived her husband by 35 years and died at the age of 89 in 1934. In her will, The Breakers was given to her youngest daughter Gladys. An ardent supporter of The Preservation Society of Newport County, she opened The Breakers in 1948 to raise funds for the Society. In 1972, the Preservation Society purchased the house from her heirs. Although the mansion is owned by the Society, the original furnishings displayed throughout the house are still owned by the family.
The Breakers National Register #71000019 (1971)
Bellevue Avenue Historic District National Register #72000023 (1972)
Baddesley Clinton is not one the grandest of houses, nor is it filled with rare works of art, but having been owned by one family, the Ferrers, since the 16th century and maintained largely intact and original, it is a rare example of the average early-modern home of the lesser gentry. Unlike such mansions as nearby Coughton Court, Baddesley Clinton is relatively small, even cozy, and one can easily imagine the life of the people who lived here. It is best known for being the home of the Jesuit Henry Garnet for almost 14 years, and the existence of several priest hides conceived and built by Nicholas Owen.
The Clintons settled here in the thirteenth century, when it was called just Baddesley, and added their name to the place. They were responsible for the digging of the moat that you see above. It was eventually sold in 1438 to John Brome, a wealthy lawyer, and the Bromes built most of the east and west sides of the house.
John Brome was the Under Treasurer of England but a Lancastrian, and when Henry VI was deposed in 1461 by the Yorkist claimant Edward IV, Brome lost all of his court appointments. He later quarreled with John Herthill, Steward to Richard "the Kingmaker", Earl of Warwick, and Herthill murdered him in 1468 on the porch of the Whitefriars Church in London. Brome's second son, Nicholas, who inherited the estate, eventually avenged his father's murder by killing Herthill in 1471.
Nicholas Brome seems to have had a taste for violence. According to Henry Ferrers, a later owner of the house, it was soon after inheriting Baddesley Clinton that Nicholas 'slew the minister of Baddesley Church findinge him in his plor (parlour) chockinge his wife under ye chinne, and to expiatt these bloody offenses and crimes he built the steeple and raysed the church body ten foote higher". He was pardoned for this killing by both the King and the Pope. Nicholas seems also to have developed a taste for building, and is thought to have been responsible for the building of much of the earliest part of the house. Baddesley Clinton passed into the hands of the Ferrers family in 1517, through the marriage of Nicholas Brome's daughter, Constance, to Sir Edward Ferrers.
The most interesting of the Ferrers is Henry Ferrers (1549-1633), the great-grandson of Sir Edward Ferrers, and contemporary with the times of the Gunpowder Plot. He inherited the property in 1564, and lived through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, dying in the reign of Charles I. He carried out extensive building, including the wing that contains the Great Hall, as well as adding the Great Parlour above the existing entranceway. He also installed much oak paneling and mantels that are still there as well.
Henry Ferrers was an antiquarian, and spent a lifetime collecting historical information, much of which was later used by Sir William Dugdale in the 'Antiquities of Warwickshire'. This interest of his can be seen by the enormous amount of heraldic glass and devices throughout the house. He was trained in the law, and admitted to the Middle Temple in 1572. He may also have served a term as an MP for Cirencester in 1593.
After the death of Henry Ferrers, the fortunes of the Ferrers family fluctuated through periods of heavy taxation such as during the Civil War and in the early eighteenth century, followed by attempts by some generations to maintain and improve the property in better times. The last Ferrers in the direct male line, Marmion Edward Ferrers (1813-1884), was so poor that Lady Chatterton, the aunt of his wife Rebecca, and her husband, Edward Heneage Deering, had to come and live with him to share the expense. These two were only married because of a misunderstanding. It is said that Deering came to Lady Chatterly to ask permission to pay address to her niece, but she thought it was a proposal to her, and accepted. Deering, although she was old enough to be his mother, was too chivalrous to set the story straight!
The estate passed down through Marmion Edward Ferrer's nephew through several relatives, and it was Mr. Thomas Ferrers-Walker who eventually sold the house to the Government, after which it became part of the National Trust. The Ferrers Archive is kept at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Henry Ferrers was also a devout Catholic, but a cautious one and was never convicted for recusancy. He must have been aware of the activities of the Vaux sisters, who rented the house from him in the 1590's in order to secretly shelter Father Henry Garnet and other priests, and to be able to conduct catholic services. Soon after they rented the house, Anne Vaux had Nicholas Owen build secret hiding places, including one created out of the sewer and the moat.
A spectacular raid on Baddesley in October 1591 was recorded both by Father John Gerard in his Autobiography of an Elizabethan, and also by Father Henry Garnet in a letter to his Jesuit superior, Aquaviva. Several priests, including Garnet and Gerard, as well as lay assistants had risen early and were preparing to leave the house, when it was surrounded and all the approach roads blocked by pursuviants. The stable-boys, knowing that so many horses saddled and ready to go would be suspicious, armed themselves with farm implements and blocked the pursuviants attempt at violent entry. This bought some time for those inside the house, as the pursuviants had to resort to requests, and led them to believe that the lady of the house had not yet arisen. Those outside had to wait patiently, albeit not quietly, while those inside were quickly hiding away the priests, Catholic vestments, and all other signs of the presence of a Catholic priest, including the overturning of their mattresses so that the pursuviants could not feel the warmth.
The priests stood in the hiding place in the moat, ankle-deep in cold water for over four hours while the pursuviants tore through the house, although their attempts at intimidation seemed to have far outweighed their skills in searching. Anne Vaux said "here was a searcher pounding the walls in unbelievable fury, there another shifting side-tables, turning over beds. Yet, when any of them touched with their hand or foot the actual place where some sacred object was hidden, he paid not the slightest attention to the most obvious evidence of a contrivance."
The searchers turned up nothing, and eventually left after being paid off by Anne Vaux with twelve gold pieces. As Gerard later said, "Yes, that is the pitiful lot of Catholics when men come with a warrant ... it is the Catholics, not the men who send them, who have to pay. As if it were not enough to suffer, they have to pay for their suffering."
You can still inspect these hiding places today, and we must say they are not for those who are claustrophobic or faint of heart. Until you actually see them, it is hard to imagine the cramped, damp, dark and tomb-like conditions these priests endured.
The first of these is a lath and plaster hutch in the roof above a closet off the bedroom in the gatehouse block. It measures six feet three inches by four feet, and is three feet nine inches high. It contains two wooden benches and is lined with fine hair-plaster.
In the corner of the kitchen, where a garderobe once existed, you can see through to the medieval drain where the hiding place used by Father Gerard and Father Garnet was located. At the time, this could only be accessed through the garderobe shaft in the floor of the Sacristy above. A hiding space beneath the floor of the Library was accessed through the fireplace in the Great Parlour, and can now be viewed from the Moat Room. It was in the Library Room that Nicholas Brome was said to have murdered the priest, and it is reputed to be haunted.
For an excellent account of the priest holes and the work of Nicholas Owen at Baddesley Clinton, the article Elizabethan Priest Holes : III - East Anglia, Baddesley Clinton, Hindlip by Michael Hodgetts, and published in Recusant History, is a must read.
The house itself consists almost entirely of building done by either the Bromes in the fifteenth century or by Henry Ferrers in the sixteenth, and although much repair and alteration work has been carried out inside the house, the panelling, fireplaces and heraldic glass throughout the house all date from the work of Henry Ferrers.
Originally quadrangular in shape, the property today consists of only three blocks, the east including the gatehouse and the Great Parlour, the south containing the Hall, and the west containing the kitchen. The gatehouse and kitchen wing are of grey sandstone, whereas the Hall, which was reconstructed in the 18th century, is of brick.
The crenellated gatehouse is one of the house's most interesting features. The lower part with the gun ports was built by Nicholas Brome in the late fifteenth century, and is thought originally to have had a drawbridge. The upper part was re-formed by Henry Ferrers to accommodate the Great Parlour. The brick bridge was built in the early eighteenth century, and the crenelations added in the nineteenth century. The massive carved oak door in the gatehouse leading through to the courtyard dates from Nicholas Brome.
The present owners are still undertaking restoration work to enable all the documented priest hides and trapdoors to be made available for viewing, this work includes part of the moat tunnel complex that is presently plugged in order to prevent midges from penetrating into the Sacristy and bedrooms
Baddesley Clinton, although still a private dwelling was sold to the Government and passed to the National Trust in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982.
The above was copied from "The gunpowder plot" website.
Great to place to visit. If only there had been some sun!
Shrine in New Orleans has what may be Nation's Oldest image of Blessed Virgin
It is under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor ("succor" means "aid" or "help"), and the accounts of how quickly the Blessed Mother has granted requests under this title--even truly major requests--are legion. "Under this title the Most Blessed Virgin has so often manifested her power and goodness that the religious have unbounded confidence in her," say the chronicles of the nuns who maintain this particular devotion (and who doubtless were praying away the storm). The chapel is at the Ursuline Convent in the city of New Orleans. It is truly one of the holiest places on the American continent. And the statue itself is the most famous miraculous image in U.S. history (along with a statue of Mary known as La Conquistadora in Santa Fe, New Mexico).
Although, compared to Europe, America has very few sites of miracles, this statue ranks with the most ancient and remarkable. It reminds one of the power felt at Montserrat. Again Mary holds the Child, her gown gold, a crown on both her head and that of Jesus, Who holds a small globe with a Cross on top (just like the globe depicted in the Miraculous Medal apparitions). Jesus and Mary are looking in different directions as if each are tending to different but equally pressing matters.
That this statue should have a link to the Miraculous Medal is not surprising in that its history involves France and once again the horrible Revolution. The convent was founded in 1727 and had set about educating the children of European colonists as well as local slaves and Indians. They were the first nuns to arrive in what is now the United States and they founded the oldest school for girls in America. In 1800, when Louisiana was ceded back to France, the good Ursuline sisters were afraid that the horrors of the French Revolution would spread to America. The territory of Louisiana was bouncing between English, French, and American hands, and the nuns, knowing what had happened to their sister nuns in Europe, certainly didn't want to see the French take permanent control. The pope himself, Pius VII, would soon be under arrest in Rome, a captive of Napoleon.
Most of the nuns fled to Havana, Cuba, but seven of the Ursuline sisters remained, and when Louisiana passed into the control of the United States, they anxiously sent President Jefferson a letter asking if their property rights would be honored by the new government. The response from Jefferson is still kept at the convent. "I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein you express anxiety for the property vested in your institutions by the former governments of Louisiana," wrote the President. "The principles of the Constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it will be preserved to you sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority ... Be assured it will meet all the protection which my office can give it."
It was a historic statement but it didn't quite end the Ursulines' worries. There were other problems. They were short staffed. The work was overwhelming. And things got nearly desperate when a mainstay of the community, Mother St. Xavier Farjon, died in 1810. That caused another nun, Sister St. Andre Madier, to appeal to a cousin of hers back in France. The cousin was named Mother St. Michel Gensoul. Sister Andre asked her to come to the U.S. and help the struggling Ursulines.
Mother St. Michel had escaped the deadly wrath of the French Revolution and had much work to do in her own land. France was a mess. Religious communities were under the duress of Napoleon. But Mother St. Michel also realized that the Ursulines in the United States might cease to exist without her help. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, she went to Bishop Fournier of Montpelier and requested leave.
One can imagine the bishop's reaction. He needed Mother St. Michel where she was. He couldn't afford to lose another nun. So many had died during the revolution or fled. "The Pope alone can give this authorization," he told Mother St. Michel. "The Pope alone!"
That was tantamount to a refusal, for it was virtually impossible at that time to communicate with the Pope, who was under arrest. Not only was he in the distant city of Rome and not only was mail far less than what it is in our day, but Pius VII had been cut off from the world by Napoleon's men, who held him in custody as they waited to transport him to Fontainebleau. We don't need too much history here. We need only know that the Pope's jailers had received strict instructions not to allow communication. Thus, writing to him was at best a waste of time, an act of folly.
But that didn't stop Mother St Michel. She knew the Virgin Mary and she knew that if it was God's will, Our Blessed Mother could do anything. With that trust did Mother St. Michel pen a letter to the pontiff on December 15, 1808, setting forth the reason why she wanted to aid her sister nuns in America. "Most Holy Father," she wrote, "I appeal to your apostolic tribunal. I am ready to submit to your decision. Speak. Faith teaches me that you are the voice of the Lord. I await your orders. From your holiness, `Go' or `Stay' will be the same to me."
When no opportunity arose for getting the letter out of France, Mother St. Michel prayed before a statue of the Blessed Virgin. "O Most Holy Virgin Mary," she said, "if you obtain a prompt and favorable answer to my letter, I promise to have you honored in New Orleans under the title of `Our Lady of Prompt Succor'."
Previously Mary had been known as Our Lady of Perpetual Succor. There was an ancient and miraculous painting under that title on the island of Crete. Like Our Lady of Good Counsel, this image was moved to Rome during the Turkish invasions. There its great and quick powers were noted when a paralyzed man was immediately healed after the image passed near his home in procession. Countless other miracles were attributed to the image. It was also known as "Our Lady of Never-Failing Help" and "Our Lady of Ever-Enduring Succor." Like the later statue, it shows Mary holding her Child, both crowned, both looking in different directions, the Madonna styled in the Byzantine fashion and gazing at those who looked upon her.
But now there was a new title, a new twist on the ancient name, and a new series of miracles. Soon after her prayer Mother St. Michel's letter finally left Montpelier. The date was March 19, 1809. And somehow it got to the Pope, who despite the dire need for nuns in France granted Mother St. Michel's request. Just over a month after the letter was sent--on April 28--Pius had a cardinal send Mother St. Michel a letter saying, "Madame, I am charged by Our Holy Father, Pope Pius VII, to answer in his name. His Holiness cannot do otherwise than approve of the esteem and attachment you have fostered for the religious state... His Holiness approves of your placing yourself at the head of your religious aspirants, to serve as their guide during the long and difficult voyage you are about to undertake."
The prayers had worked and they had been astonishingly prompt. Mother St. Michel ordered a statue carved, and Bishop Fournier, overwhelmed by the miracle, requested the honor of blessing it.
The statue of "Our Lady of Prompt Succor" arrived in Louisiana with Mother St. Michel in 1810.
And nearly immediately there were two momentous miracles.
The first occurred in 1812, when a terrible fire erupted in New Orleans, devastating what we now call the French Quarter. That was where the convent was at the time (it has since moved to another part of town). The fire was a true holocaust and, propelled by the wind, was heading right for the Ursuline convent.
That was when one of the nuns placed a small statue of the Virgin on a window facing the fire and Mother St. Michel again began to implore the Virgin. "Our Lady of Prompt Succor, we are lost unless you hasten to our aid!"
It is said that the wind instantly shifted, driving the fire away.
The Ursuline convent was one of the few buildings spared destruction!
Such events show us that nothing is beyond the reach of prayer, no problem, no disaster. Three years after the hellish fire, in 1815, yet more trouble haunted New Orleans during the war between the American and British. By this time Louisiana was a part of the United States, but England was looking to confiscate the former territory. The British arrived near New Orleans on the plains of Chalmette to square off against Andrew Jackson, the famous American general.
This too was an amazing and well-documented miracle. For there was no way the Americans could win. The British had 15,000 troops. The American force was 6,000. It looked like the Americans--and the city of New Orleans--were doomed.
The night of January 7 the Ursuline sisters went before the Blessed Sacrament and stayed there through the night. Others joined them in the chapel, praying and weeping before the holy statue. On the morning of January 8 the vicar general offered Mass at the main altar, above which the statue had been placed. The prayers were said in special earnest, for the thundering of cannons had been heard by all in the chapel.
At Communion time--at the very moment of the Eucharist--a courier rushed into the chapel to inform all present that the British had been miraculously defeated. They had been confused by a fog and had wandered into a swamp, in full view of the waiting Americans, who fired upon them from unseen positions.
About 2,600 British were lost while the Americans suffered very few casualties.
It was not Our Blessed Mother who killed the British. It was not Mary who initiated battle. But it was the Blessed Virgin who came to the aid of the just who implored her.
"The result seems almost miraculous," admitted a local newspaper, the Picayune. "It was a remarkable victory, and it can never fail to hold an illustrious place in our national history."
General Jackson himself went to the convent to thank the nuns for their prayers. "By the blessing of heaven, directing the valor of the troops under my command, one of the most brilliant victories in the annals of war was obtained," he proclaimed to his troops, describing the victory in a letter to the vicar as a "signal interposition of heaven."
Rome has officially approved devotion to Our Lady of Prompt Succor and the statue was solemnly crowned through a decree issued by Pope Leo XIII. A Mass of thanksgiving is celebrated on January 8.
The old convent remains the oldest building in the Mississippi valley but no longer houses the statue or convent, which are now located on State Street. But the feeling around the statue is still tangible. The graces still flow. Many favors are still granted. We see in this case the powerful and fast way the Virgin can operate when pious people come to her in faith. We see also the same lesson as from Saragossa, that the graces are associated with her Son. The great 1815 victory came after a night in front of the Blessed Sacrament and then was announced during holy Communion, leaving us no doubt as to the source--the wellspring--of Mary's miracles.
In our own lives we have many needs we would like to see met as soon as possible, urgent worries, compelling concerns. When we want a quick answer, when we want a quick favor, even in an "impossible" situation, this is a devotion that will accomplish such requests if they are the will of the Father.
Vellore Fort is a large 16th-century fort situated in heart of the Vellore city, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India built by Vijayanagara Kings. The Fort was at one point of time the headquarters of the Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara Empire. The fort is known for its grand ramparts, wide moat and robust masonry.
The Fort's ownership passed from Vijayanagara Kings, to the Bijapur Sultans, to Marathas, to the Carnatic Nawabs and finally to the British, who held the fort until India gained independence. The Indian government maintains the Fort with the Archaeological Department. During British rule, the Tipu Sultan's family and the last king of Sri Lanka, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha were held in as prisoners in the fort. The fort houses the Jalakanteswarar Hindu temple, Christian St. John's Church and a Muslim mosque, of which the Jalakanteswarar Temple is famous for its magnificent carvings. The first rebellion against British rule erupted at this fort in 1806, and it is also a witness to the massacre of the Vijayanagara royal family of Sriranga Raya.
HISTORY
PART OF VIJAYANAGARA EMPIRE
Vellore Fort was built by Chinna Bommi Reddy and Thimma Reddy, subordinate Chieftains under Sadasiva Raya of the Vijayanagara Empire in the year of 1566 AD. Vellore Fort gained strategic prominence following the re-establishment of Vijayanagar rule with Chandragiri as their 4th capital after the Talikota battle. The Aravidu Dynasty that held the title of Rayas in 17th century resided in this fort, using it as a base in the battle of Toppur in the 1620s. This major battle took place for the claiming of the Raya title between two factions of the Raya family. Each faction was by their respective subordinates; the Nayaks of Tanjore, the Gingee and the Madurai taking sides to suit their interests.
The Rayas also had long-running battles with their longtime rivals, the Bijapur Sultans, and with the Nayaks of Madurai and the Gingee over non-remittance of annual tributes. In the 1640s, during the reign of Sriranga Raya III, the Fort was briefly captured by the Bijapur army, but was eventually recaptured with the help of the Nayaks of Tanjore.
During Sriranga Raya's reign in 1614, a coup broke out within the royal family and the reigning Emperor Sriranga Raya and his royal family were murdered by the rival factions of the Royal family, with the younger son Rama Deva Raya of the Emperor smuggled out from the fort by supporting factions of the emperor. These events led to the Battle of Toppur in 1616, one of the largest South Indian wars of the century.
In 1639, Francis Day of the East India Company obtained a small strip of land in the Coromandel Coast from the Chieftains of Vellore-Chandragiri regions to do trading, which is now in present day Chennai.
UNDER BIJAPUR (1656–1678)
In the 1650s, Sriranga allied with the Mysore and Tanjore Nayaks and marched south to attack Gingee and Madurai. His first stop was the capture of Gingee Fort, but Thirumalai Nayak of Madurai responded by requesting the Sultan of Bijapur to attack Vellore from the North to divert Sriranga's attention. The Bijapur Sultan promptly dispatched a large army and captured Vellore Fort. Subsequently, both the Madurai-Bijapur armies converged on Gingee, defeating the Vellore-Tanjore forces. After a melee, both the Forts ended up in the hands of the Sultan of Bijapur. The defeat also marked the end of the last direct line of Vijayanagara emperors. Within 20 years after this incident, the Marathas seized the fort from the Bijapur Sultans.
UNDER THE MARATHAS (1678–1707)
In 1676, the Marathas under Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj marched south to the Tanjore country, which had recently been attacked and captured by Chokkanatha Nayak of Madurai. That same year, Ekoji, the brother of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, took control of Tanjore, but was under threat from his immediate neighbours Madurai and Bijapur Sultans, based in Gingee and Vellore respectively. Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's army first captured the Gingee Fort in 1677, but left the task of attacking Vellore to his assistant and rushed to Deccan as his territories were being attacked by Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb. In 1688, after a prolonged fourteen-month siege, the Fort passed on to the Marathas. Shivaji's representative strengthened the fort's fortifications and ruled the area in relative peace.
UNDER THE MUGHAL ARMY (1707–1760)
In 1707, the year that Aurangazeb died, the Delhi Army under Daud Khan captured Vellore Fort after defeating the Marathas. The struggle for the Delhi throne empowered the Deccan Muslim governors to declare independence. In 1710 the recently established Nawab of Arcot under Sadat Ullah Khan followed suit. Dost Ali, the latter's successor in 1733, gifted the fort to one of his sons-in-law.
UNDER CONTROL OF BRITISH (1760–1947)
Following the decline of Madurai Nayaks, the revolt from people and coinciding with the emergence of the British on the Madras coast, the Nawab and his sons-in-law broke out into a feud over the title of Nawab. The Nawab was supported by the British and the rival claimants by the French resulting in the Carnatic Wars. The British Nawab's victory in the 1760s in the Battle of Plassey finally sealed the fate of the French in India and launched Britain's dominance of the Indian subcontinent. In addition, the British took possession of Vellore fort with relative ease and used the Fort as a major garrison until the Indian independence. In 1780, the fort was besieged by Hyder Ali in the Second Anglo-Mysore War, but the English garrison held out against Hyder Ali for over two years after which the siege was lifted.
Vellore Mutiny (1806)
In 1806 Vellore fort was used by the British to station two infantry regiments of the Madras Army plus four companies of an English regiment. The British Commander in chief of the Madras Army had prescribed a new round hat for the Madras sepoys to replace their turbans, plus the removal of beards, caste markings and jewelry. These measures were intended merely to improve the appearance of the Madras soldiers on parade but the sepoys considered them to be an offensive meddling with their religious beliefs. The situation was worsened by the fact that the hat included a leather cockade, made from cow hide.
On July 10, 1806, before sunrise, the Indian sepoys stationed in the fort attacked the European barracks there, and by late morning had killed about 15 Officers and 100 English soldiers and ransacked their houses. Some of the rebelling soldiers also urged the sons of Tipu Sultan to lead the campaign. The news quickly reached the colonel commanding the Cavalry Cantonment in Arcot, who reached the Fort with several squadrons of British and Indian cavalry. The mutineers, numbering more than 800, were scattered with heavy losses. By noon the mutiny was put down. The events lead to a court of inquiry by the British, who decided to shift the Tipu Sultan's family from Vellore to faraway Calcutta, in isolation.
The news of the Vellore Rebellion sent shockwaves to England. The Governor, Lord William Bentinck, and Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, Sir John Cradock both were recalled on this count. This was the first rebellion experienced in the fort by the British.
ARCHITECTURE
It is mentioned that "there is no such fort on the face of earth like the one in Vellore. It had a deep wet ditch (moat) where once 10,000 crocodiles swarmed, waiting to grab every intruder into this impregnable fort. It has huge double walls with bastions projecting irregularly, where two carts can be driven abreast". The fort was constructed in granite from the nearby quarries in Arcot and Chittor districts. It spreads over an area of 0.54 km2 and is located at an altitude of 220 m within a broken mountain range. The fort is surrounded by a moat which was once used as an additional line of defence in the case of an invasion. It includes an escape tunnel leading to Virinjipuram about 12 km away, which could be used by the king and other royals in the event of an attack, later disputed by Researchers of the ASI who found no evidence of existence of such passage. The fort is considered to be among the best of military architecture in Southern India and is known for its grand ramparts, wide moat and robust masonry.
The fort houses a Temple, a Mosque and a Church, the renowned Vellore Christian Hospital, and many other buildings that are now used as public offices. The Jalagandeeswarar Temple, dedicated to Jalagandeeswar, is noted for its sculptures, and speaks volumes of the exquisite craftsmanship of the highly skilled artisans of that period. The sculpture in the porch on the left of the entrance is a masterpiece appreciated by the connoisseurs of art and architecture. The temple was long used as an arsenal, and remained without a deity, although several years ago it was sanctified with an idol of Lord Shiva.
The Mosque inside the fort was constructed during the last Arcot Nawab's period. Presently, Muslims are not allowed to pray inside the fort mosque despite protest by several thousand people living in Vellore. Vellore's inhabitants believe that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is being discriminatory by stopping Muslims from Mosque while Hindus and Christians are not stopped from entering temple and church respectively. However, some refute the claims of the Muslims, as in the late 1980s, Muslims late by the Late Abdul Samad had given a commitment that the Muslims did not want to worship inside the Fort structure, in support of re-opening of the Jalagandeeswarar Temple. The local jamaath leadership was also against this move, and blamed fringe political organisations of whipping up communal dis-harmony. The Church inside the fort was constructed during the early British period (Robert Clive, East Indian Company). Muthu Mandapam is a memorial built around the tombstone of Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, the last ruler of Sri Lanka.
ST. JOHN´S CHURCH, VELLORE FORT
St. John's Church, Vellore located inside the Vellore Fort was raised in 1846 by the Government of Madras for the officers and men of the East India Company military station. The church is named afer St. John the Evangelist. However, the church was never officially consecrated and hence not officially named as St. John’s Church. St. John's Church is the oldest standing church in the Vellore Diocese.
ROYAL PRISONERS
Vellore Fort has housed several royal captives over its history. After the fall of Srirangapatnam in 1799 and the death of Tipu Sultan, his family, including his sons, daughters, wife and mother (who was the wife of Hyder Ali), was detained in the fort. After the 1806 Sepoy Mutiny, the British transferred Tipu's sons and daughters to Calcutta. The Tombs of Bakshi Begum (died 1806), widow of Hyder Ali and Padshah Begum, Tipu's wife & sons, who died in 1834 are located with a kilometre to the eastern side of the Fort.
Vellore Fort also became the final destination for the last ruling monarch of Sri Lanka, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha (1798–1815). The king and his family were kept as prisoners of war at this fort for 17 years with his family. His grave can be found in the fort along with last raya kings of Vijayanagara Empire.
CULTURE
The Fort is situated in the centre of Vellore town opposite to the Old Bus stand. Vellore is on the Chennai-Bangalore highway and is 120 km from Chennai and 210 km from Bangalore. The nearest rail station is Vellore-Katpadi Junction, where all super fast trains stop. The nearest airports are Tirupati Airport, Chennai International Airport and Bengaluru International Airport. In 1981 the Post and Telegraph Department of India released a stamp commemorating the Fort, and in July 2006 a stamp marking the 200th anniversary of the Mutiny was released by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. This 13th-century fort was opened up to tourists and is now maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. Government Museum is a multi purpose museum maintained by the Department of Museum Government of Tamil Nadu. Its treasures include ancient- and present-day curiosities relating to subjects such as anthropology, botany, geology, numismatics, pre-history, and zoology. Historical monuments of the erstwhile composite North Arcot district are gracefully depicted in the gallery. This museum is kept open on all days between 9.00 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. and 2.00 p.m and 5.00 p.m. except on holidays, and admission fee is INR 5/-.
WIKIPEDIA
In synagogues a perpetual light is maintained in a lamp which consists generally of a glass vessel containing a wick burning in olive-oil; this is held in an ornamental metal receptacle suspended from the ceiling in front of the "Holy Ark," or "Aron ha-Ḳodesh," just as the candlestick ("menorah") in the Tabernacle and Temple had its place before the Ark of the Covenant.
In Judaism, the sanctuary lamp is known by its Hebrew name, ner tamid (Hebrew: נֵר תָּמִיד), which is usually translated as "eternal flame" or "eternal light". Hanging or standing in front of the ark in every Jewish synagogue, it is meant to represent the menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem as well as the continuously burning fire on the altar of burnt offerings in front of the Temple. It also symbolizes God's eternal presence and is therefore never extinguished. It is also intended to draw parallels between God and fire, or light, which is emphasized throughout the book of Exodus in the Torah.
In a Reform Jewish congregation, it is often used to symbolize the light released from the shards of the receptacles that God used to create light and goodness. These lights are never allowed to dim or go out, and in the case of electric problems, alternate emergency energy sources are used to prevent it from diminishing.
Though once fueled by oil, most today are electric lights. The ner tamidot at Peninsula Sinai Congregation in Foster City, California, Temple Sinai in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Temple Israel in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are solar-powered, symbolizing those synagogues' commitment to preserve the environment.
HISTORY OF THE PLUM STREET TEMPLE
Prior to the Civil War, the 200 families of K. K. B'nai Yeshurun (Isaac M. Wise Temple) envisioned a magnificent building to house their growing twenty year old congregation that had already gained a national prominence because of their rabbi, Isaac Mayer Wise. With his energy and vision, the congregation and Cincinnati were fast becoming a center of national Jewish life. The lot on the corner of Eighth and Plum Streets was purchased for the sum of $35,000. Construction was anticipated to cost $55, 000, but the delays caused by the Civil War and its post-war inflation meant that the building was erected in 1866 at a cost of $263,525. As a note of interest, we have recently found the original ledger book with all the entries of specific costs entailed in the construction of Plum Street Temple.
Designed by James Keyes Wilson, a prominent American architect and first president of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the building reflects a synagogue architectural style that had emerged in Germany in the nineteenth century, a Byzantine-Moorish style. It hearkens to a previous era of the Golden Age of Spain in Jewish history, and reflects Rabbi Wise's optimism that the developing American Jewish experience would be the next Golden Age. All other examples of such architecture in Germany were later destroyed by Hitler. Only one other synagogue of similar style is extant in America, in New York. The complex design of Plum Street Temple mirrors many cultures: from the outside the tall proportions, three pointed arched entrances and rose window suggest a Gothic revival church; the crowning minarets hint of Islamic architecture; the motif's decorating the entrances, repeated in the rose window and on the Torah Ark introduce a Moorish theme; the 14 bands of Hebrew texts surrounding the interior were selected by Rabbi Wise and are chosen primarily from the Book of Psalms.
The building has been carefully preserved. The original flooring, pews, and pulpit furnishings are still in use. The chandeliers and candelabra, formerly gaslight, are now electrical but still the original fixtures. The original pipe organ, itself historical in nature and a unique instrument, built by the Cincinnati firm of Koehnken and Company is still in place, although in need of restoration.
The 1994-1995 restoration renewed a sense of vitality and sparkle to a building which looks much the same now as when it was built 137 years ago. Designated a national historic landmark and placed on the Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places in 1975, it was recognized then as a "splendid and exotic building." It is even more so now with its recent restoration.
Plum Street Temple is not a museum to the past; it is a living, dynamic sanctuary still retained by a congregation devoted to its maintenance and its continuation. The building is used on a nearly weekly basis for Sabbath services, programs, life-cycle events, and other religious functions.
Beyond its history and its beauty, Plum Street Temple is the fountainhead of Reform Judaism in America. It was from this building that Rabbi Isaac M. Wise founded the institutions of Reform Judaism, which prior to his active career, had consisted of ideology without an institutional structure. The founding of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873), the Hebrew Union College (1875) and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1889), representing the structure of Reform Judaism, was accomplished from the Plum Street Temple by Rabbi Wise who served as founder and president of these three institutions while Rabbi at K.K. B'nai Yeshurun until his death in 1900. The Temple still annually hosts the ordination of rabbis from the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College. The majestic synagogue continues to reflect Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise's vision of Reform Judaism, a religious movement with a distinctly American look, so that "a religious Jew can also be a citizen of a free country, a member of society, a reasoner of modern thought."
No visit to York would be complete without a walk around the City Walls. At 3.4 kilometres long, the beautifully preserved walls are the longest medieval town walls in England. About 2.5 million people walk along all or part of the City walls each year, enjoying some amazing views. The completion of the entire circuit will take approximately 2 hours. There are five main bars or gateways, one Victorian gateway, one postern (a small gateway) and 45 towers.
York City Walls
The city or ‘bar’ walls of York are the most complete example of medieval city walls still standing in England today. Beneath the medieval stonework lie the remains of earlier walls dating as far back as the Roman period.
The Roman walls survived into the 9th century when, in AD 866, York was invaded by the Danish Vikings. The Vikings buried the existing Roman wall under an earth bank and topped with a palisade – a tall fence of pointed wooden stakes.
The wooden palisade was replaced in the 13th and 14th centuries with the stone wall we see today.
The medieval city walls originally included 4 main gates or ‘bars’ (Bootham Bar, Monk Bar, Walmgate Bar and Micklegate Bar), 6 postern or secondary gates and 44 intermediate towers. The defensive perimeter stretched over 2 miles encompassing the medieval city and castle.
By the late 18th century, however, the walls were no longer required as defences for the city and had fallen into disrepair. In 1800, the Corporation of York applied for an Act of Parliament to demolish them. In addition to the poor condition of the walls at the time, the narrow gateways of the bars were inconvenient and the walls themselves hindered the city’s expansion.
Many other cities, including London, were removing their outdated, medieval city walls at this time. In York, however, the city officials met with fierce and influential opposition and by the mid-nineteenth century the Corporation had been forced to back down.
Unfortunately, the call for preservation came too late for some parts of the walls – the barbicans at all but one of the gateways (Walmgate Bar) had been torn down along with 3 postern gates, 5 towers and 300 yards of the wall itself.
Since the mid-nineteenth century the walls have been restored and maintained for public access, including the planting of spring flowers on the old Viking embankment. Today the walls are a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade 1 listed building.
Bootham Bar
There has been a gateway here for nearly 2000 years - Bootham Bar is on the site of one of the four main entrances to the Roman fortress.
The existing structure is not Roman but it has been around for quite a while. The archway itself dates from the 11th century and the rest of the structure is largely from the 14th century. In 1501 a door knocker was installed as Scots were required to knock first and seek permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the city.
The bar was damaged during the siege of York in 1644. Like Micklegate Bar, it was sometimes used to display the heads of traitors, the heads of three rebels opposing Charles II’s restoration were placed here in 1663.
Bootham Bar was the last of the gates to lose its barbican, demolished in 1835.
Fishergate Bar
1315AD - 1487AD
Fishergate Bar is one of six gateways in the city walls. It faces South towards Selby. Nearby used to be the large flooded area known as the King’s Fishpond.
‘Barram Fishergate’ is the first documented reference to the bar, in 1315. A central stone above the archway reveals the date of the current bar. It contains the York coat of arms and an inscription which reads:
‘A.doi m.cccc.lxxx.vii Sr Willm Tod knight mayre this wal was mayd in his days lx yadys’
This tells us that sixty yards of the wall, including the bar, was built in 1487 under Sir William Tod, mayor of York.
But just two years later, in 1489, Fishergate Bar suffered considerable damage in the Yorkshire peasants’ revolt against Henry VII. The rebels burned the gates of the bar after murdering the Earl of Northumberland. The gateway was bricked up soon after and wasn’t re-opened until 1834, to give better access for the cattle market.
Micklegate Bar
Micklegate Bar was the most important of York’s four main medieval gateways and the focus for grand events. The name comes from 'Micklelith', meaning great street.
It was the main entrance to the city for anyone arriving from the South. At least half a dozen reigning monarchs have passed through this gate and by tradition they stop here to ask the Lord Mayor's permission to enter the city.
The lower section of the bar dates from the 12th century, the top two storeys from the 14th. The building was inhabited from 1196. Like the other main gates, Micklegate Bar originally had a barbican built on the front, in this case demolished in 1826.
For centuries the severed heads of rebels and traitors were displayed above the gate, the many victims include Sir Henry Purcey (Hotspur) in 1403 and Richard, Duke of York in 1460. The last of the severed heads was removed in 1754.
Monk Bar
Monk Bar is the largest and most ornate of the bars, it dates from the early 14th century. It was a self-contained fortress, with each floor capable of being defended. On the front of the bar is an arch supporting a gallery, including 'murder-holes' through which missiles and boiling water could be rained down upon attackers.
Monk Bar has the city’s only working portcullis, in use until 1970. Like the other main gateways, Monk Bar originally had a barbican on the front. This was demolished in 1825.
The rooms above the gateway have had various uses over the years, including as a home and as a jail for rebellious Catholics in the 16th century.
The Red Tower
1490AD - 1491AD
The Red Tower, built in 1490, forms the only brick section of York’s famous city walls. Because it was built of brick its construction did not sit well with the local stone masons. So much so that it was the cause of dispute, and even murder.
The masons who worked on the majority of York’s walls and buildings were unhappy about the employment of tilers to build the Red Tower; their unhappiness led to them attempting to sabotage the building of the tower. The tilers had to ask for protection from the city council to stop the masons from threatening them and breaking their tools.
This protection made little difference, however. In 1491, the tiler John Patrik was murdered. Two leading masons, William Hindley and Christopher Homer, were charged with the murder but quickly acquitted.
The first recorded use of the name “The Red Tower” was in 1511, presumably in reference to its red brick colour rather than its bloody past.
Despite forming an important and unique part of the city walls, the Red Tower fell quickly into disrepair. It had to be repaired multiple times, notably in 1541 and 1545, and was in ruins by 1736. It was roughly restored in 1800 and became known as ‘Brimstone House’ – probably a reference to its former use as a manufactory for gunpowder. It has two storeys, and a garderobe. The way that the tower appears now is thanks to G F Jones’ restorations in 1857-8.
Walmgate Bar
Walmgate Bar is the most complete of the four main medieval gateways to the city, it is the only bar to retain its barbican, portcullis and inner doors.
Its oldest part is a 12th century stone archway, the walled barbican at the front dates from the 14th century, the wooden gates from the 15th century and the timber-framed building on the inside from the 16th century.
It was burned by rebels in 1489 and battered by cannon during the siege of 1644.
Baile Hill
William the Conqueror ordered two castles to be built in York, one on either side of the River Ouse.
They formed a defensive system in response to the recent violent unrest.
'York Castle' was later reinforced and eventually rebuilt in stone and so now appears much more substantial. But originally both castles were of a similar size and layout.
Baile Hill is the name given to all that remains of York's other castle. It was the man-made mound, or motte, of the castle.
Excavations in 1979 revealed remains of timber buildings and a strong fence at the summit of the mound, together with a staircase up one side. The surrounding bailey was defended by a bank of earth built on top of the original Roman city wall.
Barker Tower
This river-side tower was built in the 14th century. It was positioned at the boundary of the medieval city-centre and, in conjunction with Lendal Tower on the opposite bank, was used to control river traffic entering the city. A great iron chain was stretched across the river between the two towers and boatmen had to pay a toll to cross it. The chain also served as a defence for the city. As early as 1380 Thomas Smyth was named as the tower’s ‘keeper of the chain’.
For boats coming downstream it would be the second toll in quick succession; St Mary's Abbey had its own tower and toll collection system a little further up the river.
Barker tower was leased for long periods to various ferrymen (and at least one woman) who ran passengers across the Ouse until Lendal Bridge was built in 1863. The ferry ran 'in summer and winter, fair weather and foul, Sundays and weekdays'.
The ferry was put out of business when Lendal Bridge opened in 1863. The tower has had plenty of other uses over the years, including as a mortuary for a brief time in the 19th century.
6972. Clearly taken from the well-maintained Cockatoo island Dockyard photographic records, we get a good overview of the 1,075 ton 'S' and 'T' Class destroyer HMAS TASMANIA here. Built by Wm Beardmore and Co. Ltd at Dalmuir, Scotland, she reached Australia with sister ships in April 1920, but was one of those subsequently laid up on Oct. 6, 1921 in the face of heavy Defence budget cuts. TASMANIA was recommissioned in Sept. and and a visit to New Guinea in June-July 1924, the only aspect of her service we can find taking her outside local waters. Again, we suspect there is a little more to know than the sparse public records found thus far on these ships. TASMANIA was laid up again on Jan. 9 1928, and was eventually sold for breaking up on 4 June 1937, with her sister ships. Photo: Cockatoo Island Dockyard, RAN Archives, it appears on the RAN Serapower Centre's online history webpage for HMAS TASMANIA, which can be found here: www.navy.gov.au/hmas-tasmania
W. Patrick McCray, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA speaking during the Session "Maintaining Innovation" at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 20, 2017. .Copyright by World Economic Forum / Manuel Lopez
Durga
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In Hinduism, Durga one who can redeem in situations of utmost distress; is a form of Devi, the supremely radiant goddess, depicted as having ten arms, riding a lion or a tiger, carrying weapons and a lotus flower, maintaining a meditative smile, and practising mudras, or symbolic hand gestures.
An embodiment of creative feminine force (Shakti), Durga exists in a state of tantrya (independence from the universe and anything/anybody else, i.e., self-sufficiency) and fierce compassion. Kali is considered by Hindus to be an aspect of Durga. Durga is also the mother of Ganesha and Kartikeya. She is thus considered the fiercer, demon-fighting form of Shiva's wife, goddess Parvati. Durga manifests fearlessness and patience, and never loses her sense of humor, even during spiritual battles of epic proportion.
The word Shakti means divine feminine energy/force/power, and Durga is the warrior aspect of the Divine Mother. Other incarnations include Annapurna and Karunamayi. Durga's darker aspect Kali is represented as the consort of the god Shiva, on whose body she is often seen standing.
Durga Slays Mahishasura, Mahabalipuram sculpture.
As a goddess, Durga's feminine power contains the energies of the gods. Each of her weapons was given to her by various gods: Rudra's trident, Vishnu's discus, Indra's thunderbolt, Brahma's kamandalu, Kuber's Ratnahar, etc.
According to a narrative in the Devi Mahatmya story of the Markandeya Purana text, Durga was created as a warrior goddess to fight an asura (an inhuman force/demon) named Mahishasura. He had unleashed a reign of terror on earth, heaven and the nether worlds, and he could not be defeated by any man or god, anywhere. The gods went to Brahma, who had given Mahishasura the power not to be defeated by a man. Brahma could do nothing. They made Brahma their leader and went to Vaikuntha — the place where Vishnu lay on Ananta Naag. They found both Vishnu and Shiva, and Brahma eloquently related the reign of terror Mahishasur had unleashed on the three worlds. Hearing this Vishnu, Shiva and all of the gods became very angry and beams of fierce light emerged from their bodies. The blinding sea of light met at the Ashram of a priest named Katyan. The goddess Durga took the name Katyaayani from the priest and emerged from the sea of light. She introduced herself in the language of the Rig-Veda, saying she was the form of the supreme Brahman who had created all the gods. Now she had come to fight the demon to save the gods. They did not create her; it was her lila that she emerged from their combined energy. The gods were blessed with her compassion.
It is said that upon initially encountering Durga, Mahishasura underestimated her, thinking: "How can a woman kill me, Mahishasur — the one who has defeated the trinity of gods?" However, Durga roared with laughter, which caused an earthquake which made Mahishasur aware of her powers.
And the terrible Mahishasur rampaged against her, changing forms many times. First he was a buffalo demon, and she defeated him with her sword. Then he changed forms and became an elephant that tied up the goddess's lion and began to pull it towards him. The goddess cut off his trunk with her sword. The demon Mahishasur continued his terrorizing, taking the form of a lion, and then the form of a man, but both of them were gracefully slain by Durga.
Then Mahishasur began attacking once more, starting to take the form of a buffalo again. The patient goddess became very angry, and as she sipped divine wine from a cup she smiled and proclaimed to Mahishasur in a colorful tone — "Roar with delight while you still can, O illiterate demon, because when I will kill you after drinking this, the gods themselves will roar with delight".[cite this quote] When Mahashaur had half emerged into his buffalo form, he was paralyzed by the extreme light emitting from the goddess's body. The goddess then resounded with laughter before cutting Mahishasur's head down with her sword.
Thus Durga slew Mahishasur, thus is the power of the fierce compassion of Durga. Hence, Mata Durga is also known as Mahishasurmardhini — the slayer of Mahishasur. According to one legend, the goddess Durga created an army to fight against the forces of the demon-king Mahishasur, who was terrorizing Heaven and Earth. After ten days of fighting, Durga and her army defeated Mahishasur and killed him. As a reward for their service, Durga bestowed upon her army the knowledge of jewelry-making. Ever since, the Sonara community has been involved in the jewelry profession [3].
The goddess as Mahisasuramardhini appears quite early in Indian art. The Archaeological Museum in Matura has several statues on display including a 6-armed Kushana period Mahisasuramardhini that depicts her pressing down the buffalo with her lower hands [4]. A Nagar plaque from the first century BC - first century AD depicts a 4-armed Mahisamardhini accompanied by a lion. But it is in the Gupta period that we see the finest representations of Mahisasuramardhini (2-, 4-, 6-, and at Udayagiri, 12-armed). The spear and trident are her most common weapons. a Mamallapuram relief shows the goddess with 8 arms riding her lion subduing a bufalo-faced demon (as contrasted with a buffalo demon); a variation also seen at Ellora. In later sculptures (post-seventh Century), sculptures show the goddess having decapitated the buffalo demon
Durga Puja
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Durga puja is an annual Hindu festival in South Asia that celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga. It refers to all the six days observed as Mahalaya, Shashthi , Maha Saptami, Maha Ashtami, Maha Navami and Bijoya Dashami. The dates of Durga Puja celebrations are set according to the traditional Hindu calendar and the fortnight corresponding to the festival is called Devi Paksha and is ended on Kojagori Lokkhi Puja
Durga Puja is widely celebrated in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Orissa and Tripura where it is a five-day annual holiday.In West Bengal and Tripura which has majority of Bengali Hindus it is the Biggest festival of the year. Not only is it the biggest Hindu festival celebrated throughout the State, but it is also the most significant socio-cultural event in Bengali society. Apart from eastern India, Durga Puja is also celebrated in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Kashmir, Karnataka and Kerala. Durga Puja is also celebrated as a major festival in Nepal and in Bangladesh where 10% population are Hindu. Nowadays, many diaspora Bengali cultural organizations arrange for Durgotsab in countries such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Singapore and Kuwait, among others. In 2006, a grand Durga Puja ceremony was held in the Great Court of the British Museum.
The prominence of Durga Puja increased gradually during the British Raj in Bengal. After the Hindu reformists identified Durga with India, she became an icon for the Indian independence movement. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the tradition of Baroyari or Community Puja was popularised due to this. After independence, Durga Puja became one of the largest celebrated festivals in the whole world.
Durga Puja also includes the worship of Shiva, Lakshmi, Ganesha, Saraswati and Kartikeya. Modern traditions have come to include the display of decorated pandals and artistically depicted idols (murti) of Durga, exchange of Bijoya Greetings and publication of Puja Annuals.
May 2, 2022—Bronx — Governor Kathy Hochul , joined by U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, State Senator Jamaal Bailey, and RuthAnne Visnauskas, Commissioner/CEO of NYS Homes and Community Renewal, announced today that Riverbay Corporation, the management company for Co-op City, HUD, Wells Fargo, the Mortgage Insurance Fund of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and NYC Housing Development Corporation closed on the refinancing of Co-op City’s HUD loan, which will maintain long-term housing quality and affordability for the over 45,000 residents. Refinancing provides the housing company with $124 million in proceeds that will be used for capital improvements, including upgrades to the HVAC, façade maintenance, and electrical systems. The announcement was made at Co-op City in The Bronx. (Kevin P. Coughlin / Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
As the Egyptian border was threatened by an Italian and German invasion during the Second World War, the Royal Air Force established more airfields in Egypt. The Royal Egyptian Air Force was sometimes treated as a part of the Royal Air Force, at other times a strict policy of neutrality was followed as Egypt maintained its official neutrality until very late in the war. As a result, few additional aircraft were supplied by Britain, however the arm did receive its first modern fighters, Hawker Hurricanes and a small number of Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks. In the immediate post-war period, cheap war surplus aircraft, including a large number of Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IXs were acquired.
Following the British withdrawal from the British Protectorate of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, Egyptian forces crossed into Palestine as part of a wider Arab League military coalition in support of the Palestinians against the Israelis. During 1948–1949, Egypt received 62 refurbished Macchi C.205V Veltro (Italian: Greyhound) fighters. The C.205 was an Italian World War II fighter aircraft built by the Aeronautica Macchi. Along with the Reggiane Re.2005 and Fiat G.55, the Macchi C.205 was one of the three "Serie 5" Italian fighters built around the powerful German Daimler-Benz DB 605 engine.
The C.205 Veltro was a refinement of the earlier C.202 Folgore. With a top speed of some 640 km/h (400 mph) and equipped with a pair of 20 mm cannon as well as two 12.7 mm Breda machine guns, the Macchi C.205 had been highly respected by Allied and Axis pilots alike. Widely regarded as one of the best Italian aircraft of World War II, it proved to be extremely effective, destroying a large number of Allied bombers, and it proved capable of meeting fighters such as the North American P-51D Mustang on equal terms.
For the Egyptian order, eight C.205 and 16 C.202 were upgraded to C.205 standard in May 1948. In February 1949, three brand new and 15 ex-C.202, and in May another ten C.205 and C.202 each were brought to the Egyptian C.205 standard. This last contract was not finalized, though: Israeli secret services reacted with a bombing in Italy, which at the time was supplying both Israel and the Arab states, which, among others, destroyed Macchi facilities and damaged Egyptian C.205s still on order.
Only 15 completed Macchis were delivered to Egypt before the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, seeing brief combat against the Israeli Air Force. The new Veltros were fully equipped, while the Folgore conversions were armed with only two 12.7 mm Breda machine guns. They were the lightest series of the entire production, and consequently had the best performance, but were seriously under-armed. Some Veltros, equipped with underwing bomb racks were used in ground-attack sorties against Israeli targets.
This left the Egyptian air force with a lack of capable fighters, so that Egypt ordered nineteen additional Fiat G.55 fighters from Italian surplus stocks and searched for ways to remedy the situation, since the relations with Great Britain had severely suffered under the Arab-Israeli War. This led to the plan to build and develop aircraft independently and just based on national resources, and eventually to the Helwan HA-100, Egypt’s first indigenous combat aircraft – even though it was rather a thorough upgrade program than a complete new construction.
Opened in late 1950 to manufacture airplanes, the Helwan Aircraft Factory, located in the South of Cairo, took on the challenge to create a domestic, improved fighter from existing C.205 and C.202 airframes in Egyptian service and its Fiat engines still available from Italy. The resulting Helwan HA-100 retained most of the forward fuselage structure of the C.205 with the original engine mounts, as well as the wings, but measures were taken to improve aerodynamics and combat value. One of these was the introduction of a new (yet framed) bubble canopy, which afforded the pilot with a much better all-round field of view and also improved the forward view while taxiing. This modification necessitated a lowered spine section, and wind tunnel tests suggested a deteriorated longitudinal stability, so that the tail section was completely redesigned. The fin was considerably enlarged and now had a square outline, while the stabilizers were raised into an almost cruciform tail configuration and also enlarged to improve the aircraft’s responsiveness to directional changes. The wings were clipped to improve handling and roll characteristics at low to medium altitudes, where most dogfights in the Arab-Israeli War had taken place.
The HA-100 retained the license-built Daimler Bent DB 605 from Italy, but to adapt this Fiat Tifone engine to the typical desert climate in Egypt with higher ambient temperatures and constant sand dust in the air, the HA-100 received an indigenous dust filter, a more effective (and larger) ventral radiator and a bigger, single oil cooler that replaced the C.205’s small drum coolers under the engine, which were very vulnerable, esp. to ground fire from light caliber weapons. To gain space in the fuselage under the cockpit for new fuel tank, both radiator and oil cooler were re-located to positions under the inner wings, similar in layout to early Supermarine Spitfire Marks.
While the HA-100 left the drawing boards and an initial converted C.205 went through trials, relations with Britain had been restored and the official state of war with Israel ensured that arms purchases continued. This gave the REAF an unexpected technological push forward: In late 1949, Egypt already received its first jet fighter, the British Gloster Meteor F4, and shortly after some de Havilland Vampire FB5s, which rendered the HA-100 obsolete. Nevertheless, the project was kept alive to strengthen Egypt’s nascent aircraft industry, but the type was only met with lukewarm enthusiasm.
The first HA-100 re-builds were delivered to 2 Sqn Royal Egyptian Air Force at Edku (East of Alexandria) in mid-1951, painted in a camouflage scheme of Dark Earth and Middle Stone with Azure Blue undersides, using leftover RAF material from WWII. Later, REAF 1 Sqn at Almaza near Cairo received HA-100s, too. Eventually, around forty HA-100s were built for the REAF until 1952. The only export customer for the HA-100 was Syria: sixteen machines, rejected by the REAF, were delivered in early 1952, where they served alongside former RAF Spitfire F.Mk.22s.
The REAF HA-100s only had a short career, but they eventually faced frontline duties and fired in anger. This also marked their last deployments, which occurred during the early stages of the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Only about 15 HA-100s of REAF No. 2 Squadron were still in flying condition due to quickly worsening engine spares shortages, and the aircraft had, in the meantime, been hardwired to carry up to four “Sakr” unguided 122mm rockets on the underwing hardpoints. Due to their agility at low altitude, the HA-100s were primarily used for ground attacks and low-level reconnaissance duties. On their missions the aircraft still performed well, but at that time, all Egyptian aircraft had been stripped off of their camouflage and were operated in a bare metal finish – a poor decision, since the glinting airframes were highly visible both in the air and on the ground. Consequently, the vintage propeller aircraft became easy targets, resulting high losses, and the HA-100s were grounded. They were officially retired by April 1957, after the end of the Suez conflict, and scrapped.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 9,10 m (29 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.01 m (32 ft 9½ in)
Height: 3.52 m (11 ft 6¼ in)
Wing area: 16.8 m² (181 sq ft)
Airfoil: root: NACA 23018 (modified); tip: NACA 23009 (modified)
Empty weight: 2.695 kg (5,936 lb)
Gross weight: 3.621 kg (7,975 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4.100 kg (9,030 lb)
Powerplant:
1× Fiat RA.1050 R.C.58 Tifone (license-built Daimler Bent DB 605) V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston
engine with 1,100 kW (1,500 hp), driving a 3-bladed constant-speed propeller#
Performance:
Maximum speed: 642 km/h (399 mph, 347 kn) at 7,200 m (23,600 ft)
Cruise speed: 400 km/h (250 mph, 220 kn)
Range: 950 km (590 mi, 510 nmi)
Service ceiling: 11,500 m (37,700 ft)
Time to altitude: 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in 2 minutes 40 seconds
Wing loading: 202.9 kg/m2 (41.6 lb/sq ft)
Armament.
2× 12.7 mm (.5 in) Breda-SAFAT machine guns, 400 RPG, in the nose
2× 20 mm MG 151 cannon, 250 RPG, in the outer wings
2× underwing hardpoints for 160 kg (350 lb) each for bombs or four 122mm Sakr unguided rockets
The kit and its assembly:
This oddity was spawned from curiosity – when read about the lightweight Helwan HA-300 fighter from the early Sixties, I wondered when and how the Egyptian aircraft industry had started? I was even more curious because I had already attributed a what-if model, the purely fictional (and later) HA-410 fighter bomber, to Egyptian engineering. So, I researched Helwan’s origins, checked the time frame of its establishment and eventually came across the REAF’s post-WWII C.205 Veltros. What if there had been an indigenous update program…?
Consequently, this conversion’s basis is a C.205V kit from Delta 2. This kit is based upon a unique mold, quite similar to the later Italeri kit, but it is different and has some curious solutions. For instance, the landing gear struts are mounted into the wings with L-shaped attachment pegs – as if the landing gear is supposed to be retractable. Odd, but very stable. Another weird solution: the wing gun barrels are attached to the wings together with massive plastic wedges that fit into respective openings. Another quite rigid construction, even though it calls for trimming and PSR. Beyond these quirks, the kit is quite nice. It comes with a convincing mix of recessed panel lines and raised rivet heads. Some parts are a bit soft in shape, though, e. g. the cowling fairings, but overall I am positively surprised.
To change the aircraft’s look I did some conversions, though. The most obvious change is the new tail section, which was transplanted wholesale from a KP Yak-23 and had the C.205’s tail wheel attachment section transplanted from the Delta 2 kit. Originally, I wanted to move the whole cockpit forward, but then just replaced canopy and spine section with a clear part from a Hobby Boss MiG-15 and putty. Other, rather cosmetic changes include clipped wing tips to match the Yak-23’s square tail surfaces shape, and the C.205’s small elliptic stabilizers were replaced with tailored, slightly bigger parts from the scrap box. A bigger/deeper radiator and a different oil cooler replaced the original parts, and I placed them under the inner wings behind the landing gear wells. Both donors come from Spitfires, even though from different kits (IIRC, the oil cooler from an AZ Models Mk. V kit and the radiator from a FROG Mk. XIV). The flaps were lowered, too, because this detail was easy to realize with this kit.
Painting and markings:
The HA-100 received a contemporary camouflage, the RAF Tropical Paint Scheme consisting of Dark Earth and Middle Stone with Azure Blue undersides. The pattern was adapted from RAF Spitfires, and Modelmaster (2052 and 2054) and Humbrol (157) enamels were used, with a light overall black ink washing and some post panel shading. Being a former Italian aircraft, I painted the cockpit in a typical, Italian tone, a very light grayish green called “Verde Anticorrosione“, which was used during WWII on many interior surfaces – I used a mix of Revell 59 with some 45. The landing gear and the respective wells became aluminum (Humbrol 56), though.
One challenge became the characteristic black-and-white REAF ID bands on the wings. These were improvised with generic decal material from TL-Modellbau: on a 1 cm wide black band I simply added two white 2.5 mm stripes, for a very good result. Most other markings belong to an early REAF MiG-15, taken from a Microscale omnibus sheet for various MiG fighters. This provided the green-trimmed white fuselage band, the roundels and the fin flash, and a white spinner completed the REAF ID markings. Unfortunately the decals turned out to be brittle (ESCI-esque...) and disintegrated upon the first attempt to apply them, so I tried to save them with Microsol Decal Film, and this actually worked like a charm, even though the resurrected decals did not adhere well to the model's surface. The REAF 2 Squadron emblem comes from a vintage PrintScale Hawker Hurricane sheet, the white code letter on the fuselage came from an Xtradecal RAF codes sheet, and the black Arabic serials came from a Begemot sheet for MiG-29s.
The kit received some soot stains around the exhaust ports and the gun muzzles and was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
Even though it’s just a modded Macchi C.205, the result looks …different. From certain angles the aircraft reminds a lot of a P-51D Mustang, like one of the lightweight prototypes? The Egyptian markings add a confusing touch, though, and while the bodywork is not perfect, I am happy with the result. The Yak-23 tail fits perfectly, and with the narrow wings the HA-100 also reminds a bit of the two-engine Westland Whirlwind?
In these uncertain times, it is unclear if we should go out to do normal things, let alone if we find the churches open when we get there.
St Michael is under the care of the CCT, and so the electronic lock makes sure the door is open each day at ten.
The church stands on a hill, overlooking west Kent, must be wonderful on a fine summer day. On a grey autumn one, less so.
We park at the lych gate, walk up the very un-Kentish stone steps, up the churchyard to the south Priest's door, which opened easily.
Inside, it was a light and airy space, with Victorian oak pews, and walls filled with memorials. Much of interestm unlike some of those I saw on Heritage weekend where there was barely 30 shots taken, here I took a good hundred, and most are keepers.
We leave the church and are greeted with the majestic view as the churchyard slopes away to the lychgate, and the road beyond vanishing down the down.
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The medieval church was superseded by a new church in the village in 1842, but remains in good repair being maintained today by The Churches Conservation Trust. In many ways it is the typical Kentish church, showing work of many different periods and many monuments to remind us of former inhabitants. As in some other local churches the north aisle is the primary one, even though the church is entered from the south. The restoration by diocesan architect Joseph Clarke in 1857 was rather heavy-handed and provided a veritable sea of oak pews. In contrast the south chapel, which belonged to the Twysden family of Roydon Hall, has a nice unrestored atmosphere, as does the south porch which shows an abundance of medieval (and later) graffiti. At the lychgate is the famous stable used by nineteenth-century congregations.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=East+Peckham+1
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EAST PECKHAM.
SOUTHWARD from Mereworth lies the parish of East or Great Peckham, written in Domesday, PECHEHAM, and in the Textus Roffensis, PECHAM. It has the appellation of East Peckham from its situation eastward from West or Little Peckham, and of Great, from its large extent in comparison of that parish.
They both had their name of Peckham probably from their situation; peac signifying in Saxon the peke or summit of an hill, and ham, a village or dwellingplace.
THIS PARISH is situated within the district of the Weald, in a country, which though for the most part too deep and miry to be pleasant, is yet exceedingly fertile as to its products, in corn, hops, and cattle, and is full of fine oak timber, with the trees of which it abounds. It joins northward up to Mereworth, and lord Despencer's park, whence it descends southward for upwards of two miles to Brandt, formerly called Stidal's bridge, and Sladis bridge, and the river Medway, which flows along the southern boundaries of it, besides which it is watered by a small stream, which rises near Yokes, in West Peckham, and runs through this parish into the river. The high road from Maidstone through Mereworth, towards Hadlow and Tunbridge, runs along the western boundary of this parish, as that from Watringbury through Nettlested to Brandt bridge, and across the Medway towards Cranbrook, does along the eastern boundary of it. In that part of this parish next to Mereworth, is the village and church of East Peckham, and on the rise of a hill the antient and respectable looking mansion of Roydon-hall, the grounds of which are bounded on each side by coppice woods; hence the ground descends to a more wet and deeper country, being a stiff clayey soil, mostly grazing land, exceedingly rich and fertile, on which are bred and fatted some of the largest beasts of any in these parts. On the roads leading to Brandt-bridge in this part of East Peckham are several hamlets, as those of Chitley-cross, North-hatch, Halestreet, and others.
This parish was antiently bound with others in this neighbourhood to contribute to the repair of the 5th pier of Rochester bridge.
IN THE YEAR 96y, queen Ediva, mother of king Edmund and king Eadred, gave to Christ-church, in Canterbury, among other lands, this estate of Peckham, free from all secular service, excepting the trinoda necessitas of repelling invasions, and the repair of castles and highways.
Peekham remained part of the possessions of Christchurch at the consecration of archbishop Lanfranc, in the 4th year of the Conqueror's reign.
The revenues of this church were at that time enjoyed as one common stock by the archbishop and his convent; but archbishop Lanfranc, after the example of foreign churches, separated them into two parts; one of which he allotted for the maintenance of himself and his successors in the see of Canterbury, and the other for his monks, for their subsistence, cloathing, and other necessary uses.
In this partition, Peckham fell to the share of the monks, and it is accordingly thus entered in Domesday, under the title of Terra Monachorum Archiepi, i e. the land of the monks of the archbishop.
The archbishop himself holds Pecheham. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was taxed at six sulings, and now for six sulings, and one yoke. The arable land is ten carucates. In demesne there are two, and sixteen villeins, with fourteen borderers, having four carucates and an half. There is a church, and ten servants, and one mill, and six acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of ten hogs.
Of the land of this manor, one of the archbishop's tenants holds half a suling, and was taxed with these six sulings in the time of king Edward the Confessor, although it could not belong to the manor, except in the scotting, because it was free land.
Richard de Tonebridge holds of the same manor two sulings and one yoke, and has there twenty-seven villeins, having seven carucates, and wood for the pannage of ten hogs, the whole value being four pounds. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, the manor was worth twelve pounds, when the archbishop received it eight pounds, and now what he has is worth eight pounds.
In the 10th year of king Edward II. the prior of Canterbury obtained free warren for his manor of Peckham among others. About which time it was valued at ten pounds. It continued part of the possessions of the priory of Christ-church till its dissolution in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered up to the king, who that year granted this manor to Sir Thomas Wyatt, and his heirs male, to hold in capite by knight's service, and he in the 35th year of that reign conveyed it to George Multon; but there being no fine levied, or recovery had of it, the crown, on the attainder of his son, Sir Thomas Wyatt, for high treason in the 1st year of queen Mary, seized on it as part of his possessions.
The court-lodge and demesnes of this manor were afterwards granted away by the crown; but THE MANOR ITSELF continued part of the royal revenue at the death of king Charles I. in 1648; after which the powers, then in being, seized on the royal estates, and passed an ordinance to vest them in trustees, to be surveyed and sold, to supply the necessities of the state; in pursuance of which, there was soon afterwards a survey taken of this manor, by which it appeared, that the quit-rents due from the freeholders in free socage tenure, the like due from the freeholders in the township of Marden, the rent of hens and eggs from the tenants in those townships, and the profits of courts, were worth altogether seventeen pounds and upwards. That there was a court leet and court baron held for the manor, and a heriot was due from the freeholders of the best living thing of such tenant, or in lieu thereof 3s. 4d. in money.
Soon after which this manor was sold to colonel Robert Gibbon, with whom it continued till the restoration of king Charles II. when it again became part of the revenues of the crown.
The grant of it has been many years in the family of the duke of Leeds, the present grantee of it being his grace Francis, duke of Leeds.
THE COURT-LODGE WITH THE DEMESNES of the manor of East Peckham was granted the nextyear after the attainder of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by letters patent, anno 1st and 2d of king Philip and queen Mary, to Sir John Baker, to hold in capite by knight's service, (fn. 1) who passed his interest in them, in the 2d year of the reign of queen Elizabeth, to Anthony Weldon, esq. but the crown afterwards disputing his title to them, the queen, in her 10th year, granted them to William Dodington, and the next year, the attorney-general exhibited an information against the heirs of Weldon in the court of exchequer, on account of these premises, and judgment was had against him. After which a writ of error was brought, and divers other law proceedings had, by which, however, at last, Ralph, son of Anthony Weldon above-mentioned, established his title to them; and his son, Sir Anthony Weldon, (fn. 2) in the latter end of the reign of king James I. passed them away by sale to George Whetenhall, esq. after whose death they came by descent into the possession of Thomas Whetenhall, esq. of Hextalls-court, in this parish, whose descendant, Henry Whetenhall, esq. alienated this estate to Sir William Twysden, bart. of Roydon-hall, whose descendant, Sir William Jarvis Twisden, bart. is the present possessor of it.
ROYDON-HALL, antiently called Fortune, is a seat here, which was of no great account till about the reign of king Henry VIII. when Thomas Roydon, of son of Thomas, second son of Thomas Roydon, of Roydon-hall, in Suffolk, where this family had been seated many generations, and bore for their arms, Chequy, argent and gules, a cross azure, came into this county, and seated himself at Fortune, and erected this seat; on which he affixed his own name, and in the 31st year of that reign procured his lands in this county to be disgavelled, by the act passed that year for this purpose. He married Margaret, daughter of William Wheten hall, esq. of this parish, by whom he had three sons and five daughters.
On the death of the sons without issue, his five daughters became his coheirs; the second of whom, Elizabeth, had this estate as part of her share, and intitled her husband, William Twysden, esq. of Chelmington, in this county, to the fee of it. She survived him, and afterwards remarried Cuthbert Vaughan, esq. and lastly Sir Thomas Golding. She left by her first husband, one son, Roger Twysden, and a daughter, Margaret, married to Richard Dering, esq. of Pluckley.
The family of Twysden, written in antient deeds, Twisenden, and in Latin, De Denna Fracta, were originally of the parish of Sandhurst, in this county, the place where they resided being called the Den, or borough of Twisden, at this time, and bore for their arms, Girony of four, argent and gules, a saltier between four cross-croslets, all counterchanged.
Adam de Twysden resided at Twysden borough, in the 21st year of king Edward I. and dying without issue, as well as his brother Gregory, John de Twysden, the youngest brother, became his heir. His descendant, Roger Twysden, in the reign of king Henry V. married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Thomas Chelmington, esq. of Chelmington, in Great Chart, who bore for his arms, Argent, three chevrons azure, nine cross-crosiets sable. At which seat his descendants, who lie buried in Great Chart church, afterwards resided, down to William Twysden, esq. who was of Chelmington, and married Elizabeth, second daughter and coheir of Thomas Roydon, and in her right became possessed of Roydon-hall, as above-mentioned, to which he removed soon afterwards. He procured his lands in this county to be disgavelled by the act of the 2d and 3d of king Edward VI. in which he is called William Twisenden, and was sheriff of this county in the 41st year of queen Elizabeth. He died in 1603, and was buried in this church, as was Anne his wife, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington, who died in 1592. by whom he had issue twelve children, of whom only six survived him.
William Twysden, esq. the eldest son, greatly improved Roydon-hall, and having been before knighted, was afterwards made a baronet on June 29, 1611. He was a man, who addicted his time mostly to study, being versed in different parts of learning, especially in the Hebrew and Latin languages, and collected many choice manuscripts and books, which he left to his eldest son. He died in 1628, and was buried in this church leaving by Anne his wife, eldest daughter of Sir Moile Finch, knight and baronet, several sons and daughters; of whom Sir Roger, the eldest son, was his successor in title and estates here; Sir Thomas, the second son, was on the restoration of king Charles II. made one of the justices of the king's bench, and being afterwards made a baronet, seated himself at Bradbourn, in East-Malling, the seat of his descendant, the present Sir John Papillon Twisden, bart. under which place an account has already been given of that branch; and Charles, the third son, was created LL. D. and had given him, by his father's will, the seat of Chelmington before mentioned.
¶Sir Roger Twysden, knight and baronet, the eldest son, resided at Roydon-hall, round which he obtained licence from king Charles I. to inclose a park, and likewise a grant of a charter of free warren for the ground inclosed. He died in 1672, and was buried in this church, having suffered greatly for his loyalty during the great rebellion, being forced at last to compound for his estate for a large sum of money. He was a great encourager of learning, and a generous patron of learned men, being himself a master of our antient Saxon and English history and laws, and left behind him the united character of the scholar and the gentleman. In whose descendants resident at Roydon hall, who severally lie buried in East Peckham church, this seat with his other estates in this parish, came down to Sir William Twysden, bart. who resided at Roydon-hall, and married Jane, daughter of Francis Twisden, esq. youngest son of Sir Thomas Twisden, bart. of Bradbourn, by whom he had three sons; William, his heir and successor; Thomas, a colonel in the army; and Philip, late bishop of Raphoe; and three daughters. He died in 1751, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir William Twysden, bart. who at first followed a military life, but afterwards retired to Roydon hall, and married Jane, the daughter and heir of Mr. Jarvis. He died at Roydon-hall in 1767, leaving his lady surviving, and by her three sons, WilliamJarvis, Heneage, and Thomas, and one daughter, Frances, who in 1783 married Archibald, late earl of Eglington. Sir William Jarvis Twysden, bart. the eldest son, married in 1786, the daughter of governor Wynch, and resides at Roydon-hall, of which he is the present owner.
This parish is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester, and being a pecu liar of the archbishop of Canterbury, is as such within the deanry of Shoreham.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Michael, is a fair large building, with a square tower at the west end. It stands near the summit of the hill almost adjoining to the southern pales of Mereworth-park.
In the 15th year of king Edward I. the church of Peckham was valued at thirty-five marcs, and the vicarage of it at twelve marcs. (fn. 5)
In the reign of king Edward III. the taxation of East Peckham was one carucate of arable land, with a meadow of the endowment of the church, worth six pounds per annum, and two dove-houses of the rectory, of the endowment of the church, and worth two marcs, and the profit of the garden, of the like endowment, worth 2s. 5d. (fn. 6)
The church, with the advowson of the vicarage, was always appendant to the manor of East Peckham, and as such part of the possessions of the priory of Christchurch, in Canterbury, till the dissolution of that monastery in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, who granted the manor to Sir Thomas Wyatt, and he settled this church, with the advowson of the vicarage, by his dotation charter, in his 33d year, on his new-erected dean and chapter of Canterbury, part of whose possessions they remain at this time.
This church is valued in the king's books at 231. and the yearly tenths at 21. 6s.
The vicarage of it is valued at 141. and the yearly tenths at 11. 0s. 8d.
It appears by the terrier of the lands belonging to the impropriate rectory, and vicarage of East Peckham at the visitation of archbishop Laud in 1634, that the glebe lands belonging to this parsonage in the park of Mildmay, earl of Westmoreland, which he had from the church of Canterbury, were twenty acres, called Keamehatches; that there were to the parsonage house two gardens, one orchard, two yards, three barns, one stable, one pidgeon-house, one granary, eight acres of meadow, called Well-mead, alias Parsonage mead, one mead called the Vicarage-mead, containing three acres, and two other parcels of land, containing seven acres, called Quarrey-mead, and the Quarrey, and that the tenant of the parsonage was Stephen Arnold; that there was to the vicarge one house, with a little orchard, by estimation almost an acre, and a little garden plot, but that which was called the Vicarage-mead, the impropriator of the parsonage kept and used.
¶On the abolishing of deans and chapters, after the death of king Charles I. their lands were by the powers then in being, ordered to be sold, to supply the necessities of the state; previous to which a survey was made, in 1649, of this parsonage, by which it appeared, that there were here a house, outhouses, &c. one orchard, one garden, and one great yard, worth fix pounds per annum, and the tithes and other profits eightyeight pounds per annum; that the parsonage, with the house, glebe lands, tithes, profits, &c. was let by the dean and chapter of Canterbury, in 1638, to John Tucker, gent. of Egerton, excepting one parcel of land, called the Hatches, demised to Sir Francis Fane, late earl of Westmoreland, and the advowson of the vicarage, at the yearly rent of 23l. 6s. 8d. but were worth upon improvement, over and above the said sum, 85l. 14s. 3d. per annum; that the lessee was bound to repair the premises, and the chancel of the church, and likewife to pay twenty shillings for entertainment money. (fn. 7) And by another valuation, taken the next year, the vicarage was valued at twenty-four pounds yearly income. (fn. 8)
In the 19th year of the reign of king Charles II. anno 1667, in consequence of the king's letters of injunction, the dean and chapter of Canterbury augmented this vicarage with the yearly sum of forty pounds, the yearly income of it is now upwards of 270l. per annum.
The present lessee of the parsonage is Sir William Jarvis Twysden, bart.
Staying active is important for older men, especially those taking a statin, to maintain independence and to stay healthy. (Graphic courtesy of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health)
Ted maintains and adjusts the sights on the blasters, which probably explains why none of the other troopers can hit the broad side of a barn (or fleeing rebel) from 30 feet away!
Martin Stratmann, President, Max-Planck Institute, Germany speaking during the Session "Maintaining Innovation" at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 20, 2017. .Copyright by World Economic Forum / Manuel Lopez
Crew chiefs maintain F-35A Lightning II fighter jets during Red Flag 19-1, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Feb. 4, 2019. Pilots and maintainers from the 388th Fighter Wing's 4th Fighter Squadron and 4th Aircraft Maintenance Unit are participating in Red Flag 19-1 at Nellis AFB, Nevada. This is wing's second Red Flag with the F-35A, America's most advanced multi-role fighter, which brings game-changing stealth, lethality and interoperability to the modern battlefield. Red Flag is the Air Force's premier combat exercise and includes units from across the Air Force and allied nations. The 388th is the lead wing for Red Flag 19-1. U.S. Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)