en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Church,_Newcastle_upo...

 

All Saints' Church is a late 18th-century church in Lower Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, which replaced a medieval church on the same site. All Saints' Church is the only elliptical church building in England, the third tallest religious building in Newcastle and the ninth-tallest structure in the city overall. It is a Grade I listed building.

 

History

The old church

A Christian church stood here in 1286, and here continued to stand, of course undergoing many changes and restorations between times, until the end of the eighteenth century, when it was pulled down, and the present church built. The original All Saints', or All Hallows', was built in the Gothic style. Its appearance is thus described by Henry Bourne:

 

This church is seated upon a hill, which is much about the same height with the situation of St. Mary’s, in Gateshead, and upon the same line with it. It is not so long as St. Nicholas, being only 55 yards 1 foot a quarter long, but it is broader, as being 25 yards 2 feet broad. The steeple is but a mean height being a square tower, with only one spire arising from it. The bells belonging to this church were founded in 1696. They were cast out of the metal of that famous statue of King James the Second which stood on the Sandhill. They were founded in the ground belonging to St Austin Friars, in that part of it which is in the back of the Hospital of the Holy Jesus. Their sound is not so melodious as the others in this town, but the note is exceedingly exact, and more tuneful than the others.

 

McKenzie, who was living when the old church was pulled down, and when much public interest was taken in it, gives in his history an interesting account, from which we gather that the steeple and west end occupied the site of the present church. The church extended further east over what is now the burial ground. The steeple was a low, square, inelegant tower, supported by buttresses at the corners of the west side, and terminated by large embrasures. From the centre rose a small square turret, surmounted by a short spire, terminated with a gilt vane. The principal entrance into the church was the west door of the steeple which corresponded in size with the west door of St Nicholas's. Above it was a large and beautiful Gothic window. There were also a north and south porch, the former leading into Silver Street, the latter into Pilgrim Street. The steeple contained a good clock, with chimes and two painted dials. The five bells were cast by Christopher Hodgson of London. There were seven chantries; one of them – St Peter's – being founded by Roger Thornton. The windows of the old church were large and ornamented with stained glass, but they were greatly damaged at the time of the civil war.

 

But the finest monument in the church was, fittingly, that erected to the munificent "Patron of Newcastle", Roger Thornton. Brand gives an illustration of it,[6] and Mackenzie describes it thus "It consisted of an altar, the front of which was enriched with beautiful gothic compartments and armorial bearings, over which rose an elliptic canopy, surmounted by a spiral arch rising in the centre and terminated with a tower, the crest of the Thornton family. The whole was included in a wall with a semi-octagonal tower at each end and embrasures along the top. On this part of the monument was the representation of two small figures supporting the family arms. But the principal ornament of this monument was the large brass plate which covered the top of the altar, on which were beautifully engraved the figures of Roger Thornton and Agnes his wife, with numerous effigies of the apostles and saints, many of them with the symbols of their martyrdom. The beautiful monument is now gone, but the brass is still preserved and hangs in the vestry. In 1841 the vicar of the church, the Rev. R. Green, had it cleaned, repaired, and fitted into the wood frame in which it now hangs." This memorial brass has now been installed behind the altar of St Nicholas's Cathedral in Newcastle.

 

A very interesting feature of the church was the seamen's porch, and gallery on the north side, built by the Master and Brethren of the nearby Trinity House, Newcastle in 1618. The front of the gallery was decorated with painted panels. The centre one bore the arms of Trinity House, and on the side panels were depicted four scriptural subjects, all most appropriately being connected with the sea.

 

Connected with the font of the old church is the name of a Newcastle worthy which deserves to be recorded. When the Scots entered the town in 1640 they commenced, in their fanatical zeal against Popery, to deface the religious monuments. Beginning at St John's, the first object sacrificed was, naturally, the font which stood in the porch. One Cuthbert Maxwell, a stonemason of Newcastle, seeing this, ran in haste to St Nicholas’ and All Saints’, and hid the fonts of these churches before the Scots had time to reach them. After the Restoration he set them up again, and thus to Cuthbert Maxwell we owe the preservation of the beautiful font of St Nicholas. Concerning that belonging to All Saints’ the font thus saved was octagonal in shape, and carved with armorial bearings. At the demolition of the church it was given to Alderman Hugh Hornby, that enthusiastic collector of antiquities who built the carved stones from Tyne Bridge towers into the wall of his garden in Pilgrim Street.

 

Of the early history of old All Saints' there are few records except accounts of repairs. We hear of the assembly of the “Four-and-Twenty”, and of the “Ancients of the Parish” – for the purpose of considering needful repairs, and of levying cesses for carrying them out. The parish register commences in 1600.

 

The new church

About 1785 the churchwardens procured plans and estimates for the restoration of the building from William Newton, of Newcastle; but Dr Sharp, the Archdeacon of Northumberland, objected to the proposed design of shortening the chancel, and thus altering the form of an old Gothic church. Two other architects, David Stephenson and John Dodds, were called in, and they reported that it was impossible to give an estimate for restoring the church, as so many unforeseen circumstances might crop up. They reported, "That this decayed building cannot be repaired but at as much expense as building a new one. If one part is taken down the rest will follow." It appeared that "the south wall was in danger of falling by the pressure of the roof; one of the pillars of the steeple had considerably shrunk, and the steeple itself inclined to the south. The stone of the groined arches under the bells was decayed, the timber and bells in great danger of falling in, the stone in several windows decayed, the walls were rotten, and the lime had lost its cement and become almost dust".

 

On Easter Tuesday (18 April 1786) a general meeting of the parishioners was held, and they resolved unanimously to erect a new church. The work of destroying the old one proceeded immediately and, unfortunately, most of its old monuments, windows, and other interesting relics were not preserved; they either perished or were carried away during the operations. It was found necessary to blast with gunpowder the masonry of the tower, so tenacious was the mortar binding it, and while doing so a sad accident occurred, by which a well-known inhabitant of the town lost his life. This was Captain William Hedley, who was killed by one of the stones of the great west door falling upon him while he was standing watching the work of destruction. He was greatly respected in Newcastle, and well known abroad as the hero of a deed of humanity and daring, in saving a child from drowning in Bordeaux harbour. His conduct on that occasion was praised highly in the French newspapers.

 

The whole of the old church having at length been taken down, the construction of the new one was commenced with. The design of David Stephenson had been selected, and the foundation stone was laid on 14 August 1786 by the Rev. James Stephen Lushington, Vicar of Newcastle. In proceeding with the building the original design was departed from in two important points. The portico, which was to have had a colonnade of Ionic columns along the south front, was altered to the present Doric design, and the money thus saved was devoted to the improvement of the tower. According to the original design, the latter was to have consisted of "a plain octagonal tower, of uniform width, rising from the arch on which the present spire stands to the height of thirty-seven and a-half feet, and terminating with a semicircular dome twelve feet in diameter, making a total height of one hundred and forty-three feet from the ground. The tame and spiritless appearance of the model, however, happily caused its rejection. A model of the present handsome and superior design was exhibited to the trustees in August 1790, and finally adopted on the 12th of September following."

 

The new church was finished in 1796, and its cost was £27,000, the whole being obtained by assessment of the parish, except £2061.19s raised by the sale of pews, £30 by donations, and £100 given by Mrs Atlee for the additional expense of making the internal fittings of mahogany instead of oak. The church is built in the form of an ellipse, the longer diameter of which runs nearly north and south. It is in form like the Pantheon at Rome. The roof, without any supporting pillars, is a splendid piece of carpentry. It was first put together in the yard at the Austin Friars, where the bells of the old church were cast. The square tower on which the steeple stands is at the south end, and the interior forms the vestibule. On either side of it there is a wing – that on the left being used as a morning chapel and for baptisms, and that on the right as the vestry where hung the monumental brass of Roger Thornton, now moved to Newcastle Cathedral.

 

On Tuesday, 17 November 1789, the new church was consecrated by the Right Rev. Thomas Thurlow, Lord Bishop of Durham, and the opening sermon was preached by the Rev. Hugh Moises, morning lecturer of All Saints’ and head-master of the Grammar School. His text was from Leviticus xix: 30: Ye shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary. I am the Lord.

 

In 1881 the churchwardens called the public attention to the state of the church, and appealed for help to remedy it. Subscriptions were gathered in and the work of restoration was vigorously proceeded with.

 

About the end of 1881 Richard S. Donkin of Campville, North Shields, a wealthy shipowner, whose place of business was close by the old church, made a handsome offer to improve the graveyard at his own expense. This offer was thankfully accepted by the parishioners, and early in 1882 the work was proceeded with. Many other generous gifts were at the same time made to the church, but we will only mention one more, that of the presentation of the new clock by Mr John Hall, another Newcastle merchant. It was formally set going and illuminated on the evening of 3 February 1882. On the occasion an address was presented to Mr Hall by Mr Joseph Cowen, M.P. for the town, on behalf of the people of the parish. In presenting this address Mr Cowen, standing on the steps of the church, made a speech to the assembled people who crowded below to the number of about ten thousand.

 

Recent history

The church was deconsecrated in 1961, and converted to offices/auditorium in 1983-84 as the Town Teacher initiative. It was then used by the Royal Northern Sinfonia before their move across the river to The Sage, Gateshead in 2004. The church was for a while used by the Church of Saint Willibrord with All Saints, a member of The Old Catholic Church Anglican Diocese. It has also hosted musical events. Following flooding damage caused by blocked roof drains over the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 winters, the building was left in a state of semi-disrepair. In 2015 it was placed on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. In 2019, the local congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales signed a 150-year lease for All Saints. After a comprehensive restoration project, worship services as All Saints' Presbyterian Church began in October, 2019. The minister is the Revd Benjamin Wontrop. In addition to two Sunday services, the church runs a mid-week Bible study. It is also open for self-guided tours weekly on Thursdays from 1-4pm and at various points in the year.

 

Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle is a cathedral city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located on the River Tyne's northern bank, opposite Gateshead to the south. It is the most populous settlement in the Tyneside conurbation and North East England.

 

Newcastle developed around a Roman settlement called Pons Aelius, the settlement became known as Monkchester before taking on the name of a castle built in 1080 by William the Conqueror's eldest son, Robert Curthose. It was one of the world's largest ship building and repair centres during the industrial revolution. Newcastle was part of the county of Northumberland until 1400, when it separated and formed a county of itself. In 1974, Newcastle became part of Tyne and Wear. Since 2018, the city council has been part of the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

 

The history of Newcastle upon Tyne dates back almost 2,000 years, during which it has been controlled by the Romans, the Angles and the Norsemen amongst others. Newcastle upon Tyne was originally known by its Roman name Pons Aelius. The name "Newcastle" has been used since the Norman conquest of England. Due to its prime location on the River Tyne, the town developed greatly during the Middle Ages and it was to play a major role in the Industrial Revolution, being granted city status in 1882. Today, the city is a major retail, commercial and cultural centre.

 

Roman settlement

The history of Newcastle dates from AD 122, when the Romans built the first bridge to cross the River Tyne at that point. The bridge was called Pons Aelius or 'Bridge of Aelius', Aelius being the family name of Roman Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built across northern England along the Tyne–Solway gap. Hadrian's Wall ran through present-day Newcastle, with stretches of wall and turrets visible along the West Road, and at a temple in Benwell. Traces of a milecastle were found on Westgate Road, midway between Clayton Street and Grainger Street, and it is likely that the course of the wall corresponded to present-day Westgate Road. The course of the wall can be traced eastwards to the Segedunum Roman fort at Wallsend, with the fort of Arbeia down-river at the mouth of the Tyne, on the south bank in what is now South Shields. The Tyne was then a wider, shallower river at this point and it is thought that the bridge was probably about 700 feet (210 m) long, made of wood and supported on stone piers. It is probable that it was sited near the current Swing Bridge, due to the fact that Roman artefacts were found there during the building of the latter bridge. Hadrian himself probably visited the site in 122. A shrine was set up on the completed bridge in 123 by the 6th Legion, with two altars to Neptune and Oceanus respectively. The two altars were subsequently found in the river and are on display in the Great North Museum in Newcastle.

 

The Romans built a stone-walled fort in 150 to protect the river crossing which was at the foot of the Tyne Gorge, and this took the name of the bridge so that the whole settlement was known as Pons Aelius. The fort was situated on a rocky outcrop overlooking the new bridge, on the site of the present Castle Keep. Pons Aelius is last mentioned in 400, in a Roman document listing all of the Roman military outposts. It is likely that nestling in the shadow of the fort would have been a small vicus, or village. Unfortunately, no buildings have been detected; only a few pieces of flagging. It is clear that there was a Roman cemetery near Clavering Place, behind the Central station, as a number of Roman coffins and sarcophagi have been unearthed there.

 

Despite the presence of the bridge, the settlement of Pons Aelius was not particularly important among the northern Roman settlements. The most important stations were those on the highway of Dere Street running from Eboracum (York) through Corstopitum (Corbridge) and to the lands north of the Wall. Corstopitum, being a major arsenal and supply centre, was much larger and more populous than Pons Aelius.

 

Anglo-Saxon development

The Angles arrived in the North-East of England in about 500 and may have landed on the Tyne. There is no evidence of an Anglo-Saxon settlement on or near the site of Pons Aelius during the Anglo-Saxon age. The bridge probably survived and there may well have been a small village at the northern end, but no evidence survives. At that time the region was dominated by two kingdoms, Bernicia, north of the Tees and ruled from Bamburgh, and Deira, south of the Tees and ruled from York. Bernicia and Deira combined to form the kingdom of Northanhymbra (Northumbria) early in the 7th century. There were three local kings who held the title of Bretwalda – 'Lord of Britain', Edwin of Deira (627–632), Oswald of Bernicia (633–641) and Oswy of Northumbria (641–658). The 7th century became known as the 'Golden Age of Northumbria', when the area was a beacon of culture and learning in Europe. The greatness of this period was based on its generally Christian culture and resulted in the Lindisfarne Gospels amongst other treasures. The Tyne valley was dotted with monasteries, with those at Monkwearmouth, Hexham and Jarrow being the most famous. Bede, who was based at Jarrow, wrote of a royal estate, known as Ad Murum, 'at the Wall', 12 miles (19 km) from the sea. It is thought that this estate may have been in what is now Newcastle. At some unknown time, the site of Newcastle came to be known as Monkchester. The reason for this title is unknown, as we are unaware of any specific monasteries at the site, and Bede made no reference to it. In 875 Halfdan Ragnarsson, the Danish Viking conqueror of York, led an army that attacked and pillaged various monasteries in the area, and it is thought that Monkchester was also pillaged at this time. Little more was heard of it until the coming of the Normans.

 

Norman period

After the arrival of William the Conqueror in England in 1066, the whole of England was quickly subjected to Norman rule. However, in Northumbria there was great resistance to the Normans, and in 1069 the newly appointed Norman Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Comines and 700 of his men were killed by the local population at Durham. The Northumbrians then marched on York, but William was able to suppress the uprising. That same year, a second uprising occurred when a Danish fleet landed in the Humber. The Northumbrians again attacked York and destroyed the garrison there. William was again able to suppress the uprising, but this time he took revenge. He laid waste to the whole of the Midlands and the land from York to the Tees. In 1080, William Walcher, the Norman bishop of Durham and his followers were brutally murdered at Gateshead. This time Odo, bishop of Bayeux, William's half brother, devastated the land between the Tees and the Tweed. This was known as the 'Harrying of the North'. This devastation is reflected in the Domesday Book. The destruction had such an effect that the North remained poor and backward at least until Tudor times and perhaps until the Industrial Revolution. Newcastle suffered in this respect with the rest of the North.

 

In 1080 William sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. After his campaign, he moved to Monkchester and began the building of a 'New Castle'. This was of the "motte-and-bailey" type of construction, a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (bailey). It was this castle that gave Newcastle its name. In 1095 the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, rose up against the king, William Rufus, and Rufus sent an army north to recapture the castle. From then on the castle became crown property and was an important base from which the king could control the northern barons. The Northumbrian earldom was abolished and a Sheriff of Northumberland was appointed to administer the region. In 1091 the parish church of St Nicholas was consecrated on the site of the present Anglican cathedral, close by the bailey of the new castle. The church is believed to have been a wooden building on stone footings.

 

Not a trace of the tower or mound of the motte and bailey castle remains now. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, which was built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,444. A stone bailey, in the form of a triangle, replaced the previous wooden one. The great outer gateway to the castle, called 'the Black Gate', was built later, between 1247 and 1250, in the reign of Henry III. There were at that time no town walls and when attacked by the Scots, the townspeople had to crowd into the bailey for safety. It is probable that the new castle acted as a magnet for local merchants because of the safety it provided. This in turn would help to expand trade in the town. At this time wool, skins and lead were being exported, whilst alum, pepper and ginger were being imported from France and Flanders.

 

Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, Newcastle was England's northern fortress, the centre for assembled armies. The Border war against Scotland lasted intermittently for several centuries – possibly the longest border war ever waged. During the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, David 1st of Scotland and his son were granted Cumbria and Northumberland respectively, so that for a period from 1139 to 1157, Newcastle was effectively in Scottish hands. It is believed that during this period, King David may have built the church of St Andrew and the Benedictine nunnery in Newcastle. However, King Stephen's successor, Henry II was strong enough to take back the Earldom of Northumbria from Malcolm IV.

 

The Scots king William the Lion was imprisoned in Newcastle, in 1174, after being captured at the Battle of Alnwick. Edward I brought the Stone of Scone and William Wallace south through the town and Newcastle was successfully defended against the Scots three times during the 14th century.

 

Around 1200, stone-faced, clay-filled jetties were starting to project into the river, an indication that trade was increasing in Newcastle. As the Roman roads continued to deteriorate, sea travel was gaining in importance. By 1275 Newcastle was the sixth largest wool exporting port in England. The principal exports at this time were wool, timber, coal, millstones, dairy produce, fish, salt and hides. Much of the developing trade was with the Baltic countries and Germany. Most of the Newcastle merchants were situated near the river, below the Castle. The earliest known charter was dated 1175 in the reign of Henry II, giving the townspeople some control over their town. In 1216 King John granted Newcastle a mayor[8] and also allowed the formation of guilds (known as Mysteries). These were cartels formed within different trades, which restricted trade to guild members. There were initially twelve guilds. Coal was being exported from Newcastle by 1250, and by 1350 the burgesses received a royal licence to export coal. This licence to export coal was jealously guarded by the Newcastle burgesses, and they tried to prevent any one else on the Tyne from exporting coal except through Newcastle. The burgesses similarly tried to prevent fish from being sold anywhere else on the Tyne except Newcastle. This led to conflicts with Gateshead and South Shields.

 

In 1265, the town was granted permission to impose a 'Wall Tax' or Murage, to pay for the construction of a fortified wall to enclose the town and protect it from Scottish invaders. The town walls were not completed until early in the 14th century. They were two miles (3 km) long, 9 feet (2.7 m) thick and 25 feet (7.6 m) high. They had six main gates, as well as some smaller gates, and had 17 towers. The land within the walls was divided almost equally by the Lort Burn, which flowed southwards and joined the Tyne to the east of the Castle. The town began to expand north of the Castle and west of the Lort Burn with various markets being set up within the walls.

 

In 1400 Henry IV granted a new charter, creating a County corporate which separated the town, but not the Castle, from the county of Northumberland and recognised it as a "county of itself" with a right to have a sheriff of its own. The burgesses were now allowed to choose six aldermen who, with the mayor would be justices of the peace. The mayor and sheriff were allowed to hold borough courts in the Guildhall.

 

Religious houses

During the Middle Ages a number of religious houses were established within the walls: the first of these was the Benedictine nunnery of St Bartholomew founded in 1086 near the present-day Nun Street. Both David I of Scotland and Henry I of England were benefactors of the religious house. Nothing of the nunnery remains now.

 

The friary of Blackfriars, Newcastle (Dominican) was established in 1239. These were also known as the Preaching Friars or Shod Friars, because they wore sandals, as opposed to other orders. The friary was situated in the present-day Friars Street. In 1280 the order was granted royal permission to make a postern in the town walls to communicate with their gardens outside the walls. On 19 June 1334, Edward Balliol, claimant to be King of Scotland, did homage to King Edward III, on behalf of the kingdom of Scotland, in the church of the friary. Much of the original buildings of the friary still exist, mainly because, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries the friary of Blackfriars was rented out by the corporation to nine of the local trade guilds.

 

The friary of Whitefriars (Carmelite) was established in 1262. The order was originally housed on the Wall Knoll in Pandon, but in 1307 it took over the buildings of another order, which went out of existence, the Friars of the Sac. The land, which had originally been given by Robert the Bruce, was situated in the present-day Hanover Square, behind the Central station. Nothing of the friary remains now.

 

The friary of Austinfriars (Augustinian) was established in 1290. The friary was on the site where the Holy Jesus Hospital was built in 1682. The friary was traditionally the lodging place of English kings whenever they visited or passed through Newcastle. In 1503 Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII of England, stayed two days at the friary on her way to join her new husband James IV of Scotland.

 

The friary of Greyfriars (Franciscans) was established in 1274. The friary was in the present-day area between Pilgrim Street, Grey Street, Market Street and High Chare. Nothing of the original buildings remains.

 

The friary of the Order of the Holy Trinity, also known as the Trinitarians, was established in 1360. The order devoted a third of its income to buying back captives of the Saracens, during the Crusades. Their house was on the Wall Knoll, in Pandon, to the east of the city, but within the walls. Wall Knoll had previously been occupied by the White Friars until they moved to new premises in 1307.

 

All of the above religious houses were closed in about 1540, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.

 

An important street running through Newcastle at the time was Pilgrim Street, running northwards inside the walls and leading to the Pilgrim Gate on the north wall. The street still exists today as arguably Newcastle's main shopping street.

 

Tudor period

The Scottish border wars continued for much of the 16th century, so that during that time, Newcastle was often threatened with invasion by the Scots, but also remained important as a border stronghold against them.

 

During the Reformation begun by Henry VIII in 1536, the five Newcastle friaries and the single nunnery were dissolved and the land was sold to the Corporation and to rich merchants. At this time there were fewer than 60 inmates of the religious houses in Newcastle. The convent of Blackfriars was leased to nine craft guilds to be used as their headquarters. This probably explains why it is the only one of the religious houses whose building survives to the present day. The priories at Tynemouth and Durham were also dissolved, thus ending the long-running rivalry between Newcastle and the church for control of trade on the Tyne. A little later, the property of the nunnery of St Bartholomew and of Grey Friars were bought by Robert Anderson, who had the buildings demolished to build his grand Newe House (also known as Anderson Place).

 

With the gradual decline of the Scottish border wars the town walls were allowed to decline as well as the castle. By 1547, about 10,000 people were living in Newcastle. At the beginning of the 16th century exports of wool from Newcastle were more than twice the value of exports of coal, but during the century coal exports continued to increase.

 

Under Edward VI, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, sponsored an act allowing Newcastle to annexe Gateshead as its suburb. The main reason for this was to allow the Newcastle Hostmen, who controlled the export of Tyne coal, to get their hands on the Gateshead coal mines, previously controlled by the Bishop of Durham. However, when Mary I came to power, Dudley met his downfall and the decision was reversed. The Reformation allowed private access to coal mines previously owned by Tynemouth and Durham priories and as a result coal exports increase dramatically, from 15,000 tons in 1500 to 35,000 tons in 1565, and to 400,000 tons in 1625.

 

The plague visited Newcastle four times during the 16th century, in 1579 when 2,000 people died, in 1589 when 1700 died, in 1595 and finally in 1597.

 

In 1600 Elizabeth I granted Newcastle a charter for an exclusive body of electors, the right to elect the mayor and burgesses. The charter also gave the Hostmen exclusive rights to load coal at any point on the Tyne. The Hostmen developed as an exclusive group within the Merchant Adventurers who had been incorporated by a charter in 1547.

 

Stuart period

In 1636 there was a serious outbreak of bubonic plague in Newcastle. There had been several previous outbreaks of the disease over the years, but this was the most serious. It is thought to have arrived from the Netherlands via ships that were trading between the Tyne and that country. It first appeared in the lower part of the town near the docks but gradually spread to all parts of the town. As the disease gained hold the authorities took measures to control it by boarding up any properties that contained infected persons, meaning that whole families were locked up together with the infected family members. Other infected persons were put in huts outside the town walls and left to die. Plague pits were dug next to the town's four churches and outside the town walls to receive the bodies in mass burials. Over the course of the outbreak 5,631 deaths were recorded out of an estimated population of 12,000, a death rate of 47%.

 

In 1637 Charles I tried to raise money by doubling the 'voluntary' tax on coal in return for allowing the Newcastle Hostmen to regulate production and fix prices. This caused outrage amongst the London importers and the East Anglian shippers. Both groups decided to boycott Tyne coal and as a result forced Charles to reverse his decision in 1638.

 

In 1640 during the Second Bishops' War, the Scots successfully invaded Newcastle. The occupying army demanded £850 per day from the Corporation to billet the Scottish troops. Trade from the Tyne ground to a halt during the occupation. The Scots left in 1641 after receiving a Parliamentary pardon and a £4,000,000 loan from the town.

 

In 1642 the English Civil War began. King Charles realised the value of the Tyne coal trade and therefore garrisoned Newcastle. A Royalist was appointed as governor. At that time, Newcastle and King's Lynn were the only important seaports to support the crown. In 1644 Parliament blockaded the Tyne to prevent the king from receiving revenue from the Tyne coal trade. Coal exports fell from 450,000 to 3,000 tons and London suffered a hard winter without fuel. Parliament encouraged the coal trade from the Wear to try to replace that lost from Newcastle but that was not enough to make up for the lost Tyneside tonnage.

 

In 1644 the Scots crossed the border. Newcastle strengthened its defences in preparation. The Scottish army, with 40,000 troops, besieged Newcastle for three months until the garrison of 1,500 surrendered. During the siege, the Scots bombarded the walls with their artillery, situated in Gateshead and Castle Leazes. The Scottish commander threatened to destroy the steeple of St Nicholas's Church by gunfire if the mayor, Sir John Marley, did not surrender the town. The mayor responded by placing Scottish prisoners that they had captured in the steeple, so saving it from destruction. The town walls were finally breached by a combination of artillery and sapping. In gratitude for this defence, Charles gave Newcastle the motto 'Fortiter Defendit Triumphans' to be added to its coat of arms. The Scottish army occupied Northumberland and Durham for two years. The coal taxes had to pay for the Scottish occupation. In 1645 Charles surrendered to the Scots and was imprisoned in Newcastle for nine months. After the Civil War the coal trade on the Tyne soon picked up and exceeded its pre-war levels.

 

A new Guildhall was completed on the Sandhill next to the river in 1655, replacing an earlier facility damaged by fire in 1639, and became the meeting place of Newcastle Town Council. In 1681 the Hospital of the Holy Jesus was built partly on the site of the Austin Friars. The Guildhall and Holy Jesus Hospital still exist.

 

Charles II tried to impose a charter on Newcastle to give the king the right to appoint the mayor, sheriff, recorder and town clerk. Charles died before the charter came into effect. In 1685, James II tried to replace Corporation members with named Catholics. However, James' mandate was suspended in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution welcoming William of Orange. In 1689, after the fall of James II, the people of Newcastle tore down his bronze equestrian statue in Sandhill and tossed it into the Tyne. The bronze was later used to make bells for All Saints Church.

 

In 1689 the Lort Burn was covered over. At this time it was an open sewer. The channel followed by the Lort Burn became the present day Dean Street. At that time, the centre of Newcastle was still the Sandhill area, with many merchants living along the Close or on the Side. The path of the main road through Newcastle ran from the single Tyne bridge, through Sandhill to the Side, a narrow street which climbed steeply on the north-east side of the castle hill until it reached the higher ground alongside St Nicholas' Church. As Newcastle developed, the Side became lined with buildings with projecting upper stories, so that the main street through Newcastle was a narrow, congested, steep thoroughfare.

 

In 1701 the Keelmen's Hospital was built in the Sandgate area of the city, using funds provided by the keelmen. The building still stands today.

 

Eighteenth century

In the 18th century, Newcastle was the country's largest print centre after London, Oxford and Cambridge, and the Literary and Philosophical Society of 1793, with its erudite debates and large stock of books in several languages predated the London Library by half a century.

 

In 1715, during the Jacobite rising in favour of the Old Pretender, an army of Jacobite supporters marched on Newcastle. Many of the Northumbrian gentry joined the rebels. The citizens prepared for its arrival by arresting Jacobite supporters and accepting 700 extra recruits into the local militia. The gates of the city were closed against the rebels. This proved enough to delay an attack until reinforcements arrived forcing the rebel army to move across to the west coast. The rebels finally surrendered at Preston.

 

In 1745, during a second Jacobite rising in favour of the Young Pretender, a Scottish army crossed the border led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Once again Newcastle prepared by arresting Jacobite supporters and inducting 800 volunteers into the local militia. The town walls were strengthened, most of the gates were blocked up and some 200 cannon were deployed. 20,000 regulars were billeted on the Town Moor. These preparations were enough to force the rebel army to travel south via the west coast. They were eventually defeated at Culloden in 1746.

 

Newcastle's actions during the 1715 rising in resisting the rebels and declaring for George I, in contrast to the rest of the region, is the most likely source of the nickname 'Geordie', applied to people from Tyneside, or more accurately Newcastle. Another theory, however, is that the name 'Geordie' came from the inventor of the Geordie lamp, George Stephenson. It was a type of safety lamp used in mining, but was not invented until 1815. Apparently the term 'German Geordie' was in common use during the 18th century.

 

The city's first hospital, Newcastle Infirmary opened in 1753; it was funded by public subscription. A lying-in hospital was established in Newcastle in 1760. The city's first public hospital for mentally ill patients, Wardens Close Lunatic Hospital was opened in October 1767.

 

In 1771 a flood swept away much of the bridge at Newcastle. The bridge had been built in 1250 and repaired after a flood in 1339. The bridge supported various houses and three towers and an old chapel. A blue stone was placed in the middle of the bridge to mark the boundary between Newcastle and the Palatinate of Durham. A temporary wooden bridge had to be built, and this remained in use until 1781, when a new stone bridge was completed. The new bridge consisted of nine arches. In 1801, because of the pressure of traffic, the bridge had to be widened.

 

A permanent military presence was established in the city with the completion of Fenham Barracks in 1806. The facilities at the Castle for holding assizes, which had been condemned for their inconvenience and unhealthiness, were replaced when the Moot Hall opened in August 1812.

 

Victorian period

Present-day Newcastle owes much of its architecture to the work of the builder Richard Grainger, aided by architects John Dobson, Thomas Oliver, John and Benjamin Green and others. In 1834 Grainger won a competition to produce a new plan for central Newcastle. He put this plan into effect using the above architects as well as architects employed in his own office. Grainger and Oliver had already built Leazes Terrace, Leazes Crescent and Leazes Place between 1829 and 1834. Grainger and Dobson had also built the Royal Arcade at the foot of Pilgrim Street between 1830 and 1832. The most ambitious project covered 12 acres 12 acres (49,000 m2) in central Newcastle, on the site of Newe House (also called Anderson Place). Grainger built three new thoroughfares, Grey Street, Grainger Street and Clayton Street with many connecting streets, as well as the Central Exchange and the Grainger Market. John Wardle and George Walker, working in Grainger's office, designed Clayton Street, Grainger Street and most of Grey Street. Dobson designed the Grainger Market and much of the east side of Grey Street. John and Benjamin Green designed the Theatre Royal at the top of Grey Street, where Grainger placed the column of Grey's Monument as a focus for the whole scheme. Grey Street is considered to be one of the finest streets in the country, with its elegant curve. Unfortunately most of old Eldon Square was demolished in the 1960s in the name of progress. The Royal Arcade met a similar fate.

 

In 1849 a new bridge was built across the river at Newcastle. This was the High Level Bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson, and slightly up river from the existing bridge. The bridge was designed to carry road and rail traffic across the Tyne Gorge on two decks with rail traffic on the upper deck and road traffic on the lower. The new bridge meant that traffic could pass through Newcastle without having to negotiate the steep, narrow Side, as had been necessary for centuries. The bridge was opened by Queen Victoria, who one year later opened the new Central Station, designed by John Dobson. Trains were now able to cross the river, directly into the centre of Newcastle and carry on up to Scotland. The Army Riding School was also completed in 1849.

 

In 1854 a large fire started on the Gateshead quayside and an explosion caused it to spread across the river to the Newcastle quayside. A huge conflagration amongst the narrow alleys, or 'chares', destroyed the homes of 800 families as well as many business premises. The narrow alleys that had been destroyed were replaced by streets containing blocks of modern offices.

 

In 1863 the Town Hall in St Nicholas Square replaced the Guildhall as the meeting place of Newcastle Town Council.

 

In 1876 the low level bridge was replaced by a new bridge known as the Swing Bridge, so called because the bridge was able to swing horizontally on a central axis and allow ships to pass on either side. This meant that for the first time sizeable ships could pass up-river beyond Newcastle. The bridge was built and paid for by William Armstrong, a local arms manufacturer, who needed to have warships access his Elswick arms factory to fit armaments to them. The Swing Bridge's rotating mechanism is adapted from the cannon mounts developed in Armstrong's arms works. In 1882 the Elswick works began to build ships as well as to arm them. The Barrack Road drill hall was completed in 1890.

 

Industrialisation

In the 19th century, shipbuilding and heavy engineering were central to the city's prosperity; and the city was a powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution. Newcastle's development as a major city owed most to its central role in the production and export of coal. The phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" was first recorded in 1538; it proverbially denotes bringing a particular commodity to a place that has more than enough of it already.

 

Innovation in Newcastle and surrounding areas included the following:

 

George Stephenson developed a miner's safety lamp at the same time that Humphry Davy developed a rival design. The lamp made possible the opening up of ever deeper mines to provide the coal that powered the industrial revolution.

George and his son Robert Stephenson were hugely influential figures in the development of the early railways. George developed Blücher, a locomotive working at Killingworth colliery in 1814, whilst Robert was instrumental in the design of Rocket, a revolutionary design that was the forerunner of modern locomotives. Both men were involved in planning and building railway lines, all over this country and abroad.

 

Joseph Swan demonstrated a working electric light bulb about a year before Thomas Edison did the same in the USA. This led to a dispute as to who had actually invented the light bulb. Eventually the two rivals agreed to form a mutual company between them, the Edison and Swan Electric Light Company, known as Ediswan.

 

Charles Algernon Parsons invented the steam turbine, for marine use and for power generation. He used Turbinia, a small, turbine-powered ship, to demonstrate the speed that a steam turbine could generate. Turbinia literally ran rings around the British Fleet at a review at Spithead in 1897.

 

William Armstrong invented a hydraulic crane that was installed in dockyards up and down the country. He then began to design light, accurate field guns for the British army. These were a vast improvement on the existing guns that were then in use.

 

The following major industries developed in Newcastle or its surrounding area:

 

Glassmaking

A small glass industry existed in Newcastle from the mid-15th century. In 1615 restrictions were put on the use of wood for manufacturing glass. It was found that glass could be manufactured using the local coal, and so a glassmaking industry grew up on Tyneside. Huguenot glassmakers came over from France as refugees from persecution and set up glasshouses in the Skinnerburn area of Newcastle. Eventually, glass production moved to the Ouseburn area of Newcastle. In 1684 the Dagnia family, Sephardic Jewish emigrants from Altare, arrived in Newcastle from Stourbridge and established glasshouses along the Close, to manufacture high quality flint glass. The glass manufacturers used sand ballast from the boats arriving in the river as the main raw material. The glassware was then exported in collier brigs. The period from 1730 to 1785 was the highpoint of Newcastle glass manufacture, when the local glassmakers produced the 'Newcastle Light Baluster'. The glassmaking industry still exists in the west end of the city with local Artist and Glassmaker Jane Charles carrying on over four hundred years of hot glass blowing in Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Locomotive manufacture

In 1823 George Stephenson and his son Robert established the world's first locomotive factory near Forth Street in Newcastle. Here they built locomotives for the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, as well as many others. It was here that the famous locomotive Rocket was designed and manufactured in preparation for the Rainhill Trials. Apart from building locomotives for the British market, the Newcastle works also produced locomotives for Europe and America. The Forth Street works continued to build locomotives until 1960.

 

Shipbuilding

In 1296 a wooden, 135 ft (41 m) long galley was constructed at the mouth of the Lort Burn in Newcastle, as part of a twenty-ship order from the king. The ship cost £205, and is the earliest record of shipbuilding in Newcastle. However the rise of the Tyne as a shipbuilding area was due to the need for collier brigs for the coal export trade. These wooden sailing ships were usually built locally, establishing local expertise in building ships. As ships changed from wood to steel, and from sail to steam, the local shipbuilding industry changed to build the new ships. Although shipbuilding was carried out up and down both sides of the river, the two main areas for building ships in Newcastle were Elswick, to the west, and Walker, to the east. By 1800 Tyneside was the third largest producer of ships in Britain. Unfortunately, after the Second World War, lack of modernisation and competition from abroad gradually caused the local industry to decline and die.

 

Armaments

In 1847 William Armstrong established a huge factory in Elswick, west of Newcastle. This was initially used to produce hydraulic cranes but subsequently began also to produce guns for both the army and the navy. After the Swing Bridge was built in 1876 allowing ships to pass up river, warships could have their armaments fitted alongside the Elswick works. Armstrong's company took over its industrial rival, Joseph Whitworth of Manchester in 1897.

 

Steam turbines

Charles Algernon Parsons invented the steam turbine and, in 1889, founded his own company C. A. Parsons and Company in Heaton, Newcastle to make steam turbines. Shortly after this, he realised that steam turbines could be used to propel ships and, in 1897, he founded a second company, Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company in Wallsend. It is there that he designed and manufactured Turbinia. Parsons turbines were initially used in warships but soon came to be used in merchant and passenger vessels, including the liner Mauretania which held the blue riband for the Atlantic crossing until 1929. Parsons' company in Heaton began to make turbo-generators for power stations and supplied power stations all over the world. The Heaton works, reduced in size, remains as part of the Siemens AG industrial giant.

 

Pottery

In 1762 the Maling pottery was founded in Sunderland by French Huguenots, but transferred to Newcastle in 1817. A factory was built in the Ouseburn area of the city. The factory was rebuilt twice, finally occupying a 14-acre (57,000 m2) site that was claimed to be the biggest pottery in the world and which had its own railway station. The pottery pioneered use of machines in making potteries as opposed to hand production. In the 1890s the company went up-market and employed in-house designers. The period up to the Second World War was the most profitable with a constant stream of new designs being introduced. However, after the war, production gradually declined and the company closed in 1963.

 

Expansion of the city

Newcastle was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835: the reformed municipal borough included the parishes of Byker, Elswick, Heaton, Jesmond, Newcastle All Saints, Newcastle St Andrew, Newcastle St John, Newcastle St Nicholas, and Westgate. The urban districts of Benwell and Fenham and Walker were added in 1904. In 1935, Newcastle gained Kenton and parts of the parishes of West Brunton, East Denton, Fawdon, Longbenton. The most recent expansion in Newcastle's boundaries took place under the Local Government Act 1972 on 1 April 1974, when Newcastle became a metropolitan borough, also including the urban districts of Gosforth and Newburn, and the parishes of Brunswick, Dinnington, Hazlerigg, North Gosforth and Woolsington from the Castle Ward Rural District, and the village of Westerhope.

 

Meanwhile Northumberland County Council was formed under the Local Government Act 1888 and benefited from a dedicated meeting place when County Hall was completed in the Castle Garth area of Newcastle in 1910. Following the Local Government Act 1972 County Hall relocated to Morpeth in April 1981.

 

Twentieth century

In 1925 work began on a new high-level road bridge to span the Tyne Gorge between Newcastle and Gateshead. The capacity of the existing High-Level Bridge and Swing Bridge were being strained to the limit, and an additional bridge had been discussed for a long time. The contract was awarded to the Dorman Long Company and the bridge was finally opened by King George V in 1928. The road deck was 84 feet (26 m) above the river and was supported by a 531 feet (162 m) steel arch. The new Tyne Bridge quickly became a symbol for Newcastle and Tyneside, and remains so today.

 

During the Second World War, Newcastle was largely spared the horrors inflicted upon other British cities bombed during the Blitz. Although the armaments factories and shipyards along the River Tyne were targeted by the Luftwaffe, they largely escaped unscathed. Manors goods yard and railway terminal, to the east of the city centre, and the suburbs of Jesmond and Heaton suffered bombing during 1941. There were 141 deaths and 587 injuries, a relatively small figure compared to the casualties in other industrial centres of Britain.

 

In 1963 the city gained its own university, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, by act of parliament. A School of Medicine and Surgery had been established in Newcastle in 1834. This eventually developed into a college of medicine attached to Durham University. A college of physical science was also founded and became Armstrong College in 1904. In 1934 the two colleges merged to become King's College, Durham. This remained as part of Durham University until the new university was created in 1963. In 1992 the city gained its second university when Newcastle Polytechnic was granted university status as Northumbria University.

 

Newcastle City Council moved to the new Newcastle Civic Centre in 1968.

 

As heavy industries declined in the second half of the 20th century, large sections of the city centre were demolished along with many areas of slum housing. The leading political figure in the city during the 1960s was T. Dan Smith who oversaw a massive building programme of highrise housing estates and authorised the demolition of a quarter of the Georgian Grainger Town to make way for Eldon Square Shopping Centre. Smith's control in Newcastle collapsed when it was exposed that he had used public contracts to advantage himself and his business associates and for a time Newcastle became a byword for civic corruption as depicted in the films Get Carter and Stormy Monday and in the television series Our Friends in the North. However, much of the historic Grainger Town area survived and was, for the most part, fully restored in the late 1990s. Northumberland Street, initially the A1, was gradually closed to traffic from the 1970s and completely pedestrianised by 1998.

 

In 1978 a new rapid transport system, the Metro, was built, linking the Tyneside area. The system opened in August 1980. A new bridge was built to carry the Metro across the river between Gateshead and Newcastle. This was the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, commonly known as the Metro Bridge. Eventually the Metro system was extended to reach Newcastle Airport in 1991, and in 2002 the Metro system was extended to the nearby city of Sunderland.

 

As the 20th century progressed, trade on the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides gradually declined, until by the 1980s both sides of the river were looking rather derelict. Shipping company offices had closed along with offices of firms related to shipping. There were also derelict warehouses lining the riverbank. Local government produced a master plan to re-develop the Newcastle quayside and this was begun in the 1990s. New offices, restaurants, bars and residential accommodation were built and the area has changed in the space of a few years into a vibrant area, partially returning the focus of Newcastle to the riverside, where it was in medieval times.

 

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge, a foot and cycle bridge, 26 feet (7.9 m) wide and 413 feet (126 m) long, was completed in 2001. The road deck is in the form of a curve and is supported by a steel arch. To allow ships to pass, the whole structure, both arch and road-deck, rotates on huge bearings at either end so that the road deck is lifted. The bridge can be said to open and shut like a human eye. It is an important addition to the re-developed quayside area, providing a vital link between the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides.

 

Recent developments

Today the city is a vibrant centre for office and retail employment, but just a short distance away there are impoverished inner-city housing estates, in areas originally built to provide affordable housing for employees of the shipyards and other heavy industries that lined the River Tyne. In the 2010s Newcastle City Council began implementing plans to regenerate these depressed areas, such as those along the Ouseburn Valley.

replaced my clutch liner

Replacing 11kV light section angle pole

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a slightly better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 07-Sep-25. A very murky day at Hong Kong, some heat haze, a very yellowed negative and taken through glass... what could possibly go wrong!

 

First flown in Nov-82 with the McDonnell Douglas test registration N1004S, this aircraft was originally ordered by PSA Pacific Southwest Airlines as N947PS but the order was cancelled and it was stored at Long Beach, CA, USA.

 

It was delivered to CAAC - Civil Aviation Administration of China as B-2101 in Dec-83. It was transferred to China Eastern Airlines in May-88. In Apr-99 the aircraft was sold to GECAS and leased back to China Eastern.

 

It was returned to GECAS as N816NK in May-00 and stored at Nimes, France. It was transferred to Aviation Financial Services Inc in Sep-01 and leased to Spirit Airlines, USA in Oct-01 for 10 years.

 

However, the aircraft was returned to AFS Inc in Sep-04 and permanently retired. It was stored (where? - possibly Fort Lauderdale). It was eventually broken up but the registration wasn't cancelled until Jul-17.

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 03-Mar-20.

 

First flown as a B767-3T9ER in Apr-87 with the Boeing test registration N767PW, this aircraft was the Pratt & Whitney engine test-bed. In Mar-88, after the test programme was completed, it was re-designated as a B767-3Z9ER and re-registered N6009F. It was delivered to Lauda Air (Austria) as OE-LAU in Apr-88. It was wet-leased to Vietnam Airlines between Au/Sep-89. The aircraft was transferred to a Lauda subsidiary, Lauda Air Italy SpA in Dec-97 and returned to Lauda Air in Nov-00. It was wet-leased to Royal Nepal Airlines between Dec-00/Jun-01, and to Air Atlanta Icelandic between Jun/Oct-01. The aircraft was sold to FIT Aero Iceland as G-VKNG in Sep-04 and immediately leased to Air Atlanta Icelandic. It was transferred to subsidiary, Air Atlanta Europe and sub-leased to Excel Airways in Nov-04. Excel Airways was renamed XL Airways UK in Nov-06. It was returned to FIT Aero Iceland in Sep-08 and sold to Wells Fargo Bank Northwest as N763BK three days later and stored at Toronto, Canada, It was leased to Ryan International Airlines in Feb-09 and they bought it in Aug-09. They sold it to their own Holding Company, Ryan 763BK LLC in Nov-11 and leased it back. The aircraft was withdrawn from service and stored at Marana, AZ, USA in Aug-12. Ryan International ceased operations in Jan-13 and it was returned to Ryan 763BK LLC. It remained stored at Manana and was repossessed by the Barrington Bank & Trust Company in Feb-13. By then it was 26 years old and was permanently retired in Sep-13. It was last noted at Marana in the parts recovery area in Oct-13.

The Belmon/Kimbell CTA depot, which is set for destruction soon, to be replaced by some new, modern monstrosity.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 18-Mar-18. plus Topaz DeNoise AI 24-Jan-24.

 

North Atlantic Airways - Malta, leased from Kalitta/American International Airways (if you look closely you can see some of Kalitta's red/gold livery showing through the white below the flight deck windows.

 

This aircraft was originally built as a Boeing 747-2B4B(M) Combi with a main deck side cargo door (SCD). It was delivered to MEA Middle East Airlines as OD-AGH in May-75. In Jun-77 it was wet-leased to Saudia Saudi Arabian Airlines and returned to MEA in Jan-81.

 

In Sep-81 it was wet-leased to Nigeria Airways, returning to MEA in Oct-81. The aircraft was sold to a US lessor and re-registered N202AE in Dec-84 and leased back to MEA. It was returned to the lessor in Apr-85 and was immediately leased to British Airways as G-BLVE.

 

It returned to the lessor as N202AE in Apr-90 when it was again leased to MEA. MEA sub-leased it to Air France between Jun-90/Jul-91, then to Garuda Indonesia Airlines between Jan-92/Jun-93 and again between Apr/Jun-95 for a Haj Pilgrimage operation.

 

In Mar-96 the aircraft was sold back to MEA and re-registered OD-AGH again. In Sep-97 it was sold to American International Airways as N710CK and was converted to a full freighter in Nov-98 and wet-leased to North Atlantic Airways (Malta) later the same month.

 

While it was with NAA, American International was renamed Kitty Hawk International Air Cargo in Feb-99 and the aircraft returned to them in Mar-99. It was stored at Victorville, CA, USA in May-00.

 

Kitty Hawk filed for US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Aug-02 and the aircraft was transferred to the Kitty Hawk Collateral Liquidating Trust in Sep-02. It remained stored at Victorville.

 

In Jul-03 the company became Kalitta Air (again!) and the aircraft returned to service. It continued in service until , at the age of 33.5, it was permanently retired at Oscoda, MI, USA in Dec-08. It was last noted still at Oscoda in Jul-12 with many parts missing.

 

Note: The registration N710CK was re-used by Kalitta Air in Mar-18 when it bought a Boeing 747-4B5F from Korean Air Cargo (ex HL7642).

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 25-Mar-24

 

Fly FTI (Frosch Touristik International - a German tour operator) was another offshoot of the UK tour operator Airtours International.

 

This was another lessor owned aircraft with a long history. First flown in Jun-93 with the Airbus test registration F-WWDM, this aircraft was stored at Toulouse, France in Jul-93 before delivery to the Orix Aircraft Corporation in Sep-93. It remained in storage until it was re-registered N437RX in Mar-94.

 

It was leased to Airworld, UK as G-BVJV in Apr-94 for the summer season. On it's return to Orix in Nov-94 it was stored at Stansted, UK and leased to Airworld again in Apr-95. It was sub-leased to Skyservice Airlines (Canada) as C-FWOQ in Nov-95 and returned to Airworld as G-BVJV in Apr-96.

 

It was leased to Transmeridian Airways, USA as N437RX in Nov-96 for the winter, returning to Airworld as G-BVJV in Apr-97. The aircraft returned to Orix in Nov-97 and was leased to Airtours International Airways as G-EPFR two weeks later.

 

It was sub-leased to Skyservice as C-FTDF in Dec-97 and returned to Airtours in Apr-98. In Nov-98 it was sub-leased to Airtours subsidiary SkyserviceUSA and returned to Airtours as G-EPFR in Apr-99.

 

In Feb-00 the aircraft was leased to Airtours German subsidiary FlyFTI (operating for German Tour Operator, Frosch Touristik International). It was re-registered D-AAMS in Mar-00. It returned to Airtours in Jan-01 and was sub-leased to Skyservice Airlines, Canada as C-FTDF in Feb-01.

 

The sub-lease to Skyservice continued with the aircraft being sub-leased back to Airtours International for the summer season from Apr/Nov-01.

 

Airtours was renamed MyTravel Airways in Apr-02 and the summer sub-leases from Skyservice, Canada continued between May/Nov-02, Apr/Nov-03, May/Nov-04, May/Nov-05 and Mar/Nov-06. The aircraft was returned to MyTravel Airways, this time as G-FTDF, in Apr-07.

 

MyTravel was merged into Thomas Cook Airlines UK in Mar-08. The aircraft continued in service until it was permanently retired and stored at Manchester, UK in Jan-11. It was ferried to Greenwood, MS, USA for further storage. The registration was cancelled in Aug-11 and it was later broken up.

Beamish Museum is the first regional open-air museum, in England, located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, in County Durham, England. Beamish pioneered the concept of a living museum. By displaying duplicates or replaceable items, it was also an early example of the now commonplace practice of museums allowing visitors to touch objects.

 

The museum's guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early 20th century. Much of the restoration and interpretation is specific to the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, together with portions of countryside under the influence of Industrial Revolution from 1825. On its 350 acres (140 ha) estate it uses a mixture of translocated, original and replica buildings, a large collection of artefacts, working vehicles and equipment, as well as livestock and costumed interpreters.

 

The museum has received a number of awards since it opened to visitors in 1972 and has influenced other living museums.[citation needed] It is an educational resource, and also helps to preserve some traditional and rare north-country livestock breeds.

 

In 1958, days after starting as director of the Bowes Museum, inspired by Scandinavian folk museums, and realising the North East's traditional industries and communities were disappearing, Frank Atkinson presented a report to Durham County Council urging that a collection of items of everyday history on a large scale should begin as soon as possible, so that eventually an open air museum could be established. As well as objects, Atkinson was also aiming to preserve the region's customs and dialect. He stated the new museum should "attempt to make the history of the region live" and illustrate the way of life of ordinary people. He hoped the museum would be run by, be about and exist for the local populace, desiring them to see the museum as theirs, featuring items collected from them.

 

Fearing it was now almost too late, Atkinson adopted a policy of "unselective collecting" — "you offer it to us and we will collect it." Donations ranged in size from small items to locomotives and shops, and Atkinson initially took advantage of a surplus of space available in the 19th-century French chateau-style building housing the Bowes Museum to store items donated for the open air museum. With this space soon filled, a former British Army tank depot at Brancepeth was taken over, although in just a short time its entire complement of 22 huts and hangars had been filled, too.

 

In 1966, a working party was established to set up a museum "for the purpose of studying, collecting, preserving and exhibiting buildings, machinery, objects and information illustrating the development of industry and the way of life of the north of England", and it selected Beamish Hall, having been vacated by the National Coal Board, as a suitable location.

 

In August 1970, with Atkinson appointed as its first full-time director together with three staff members, the museum was first established by moving some of the collections into the hall. In 1971, an introductory exhibition, "Museum in the Making" opened at the hall.

 

The museum was opened to visitors on its current site for the first time in 1972, with the first translocated buildings (the railway station and colliery winding engine) being erected the following year. The first trams began operating on a short demonstration line in 1973. The Town station was formally opened in 1976, the same year the reconstruction of the colliery winding engine house was completed, and the miners' cottages were relocated. Opening of the drift mine as an exhibit followed in 1979.

 

In 1975 the museum was visited by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and by Anne, Princess Royal, in 2002. In 2006, as the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, The Duke of Kent visited, to open the town masonic lodge.

 

With the Co-op having opened in 1984, the town area was officially opened in 1985. The pub had opened in the same year, with Ravensworth Terrace having been reconstructed from 1980 to 1985. The newspaper branch office had also been built in the mid-1980s. Elsewhere, the farm on the west side of the site (which became Home Farm) opened in 1983. The present arrangement of visitors entering from the south was introduced in 1986.

 

At the beginning of the 1990s, further developments in the Pit Village were opened, the chapel in 1990, and the board school in 1992. The whole tram circle was in operation by 1993. Further additions to the Town came in 1994 with the opening of the sweet shop and motor garage,Beamish Museum 2014 followed by the bank in 1999. The first Georgian component of the museum arrived when Pockerley Old Hall opened in 1995, followed by the Pockerley Waggonway in 2001.

 

In the early 2000s two large modern buildings were added, to augment the museum's operations and storage capacity - the Regional Resource Centre on the west side opened in 2001, followed by the Regional Museums Store next to the railway station in 2002. Due to its proximity, the latter has been cosmetically presented as Beamish Waggon and Iron Works. Additions to display areas came in the form of the Masonic lodge (2006) and the Lamp Cabin in the Colliery (2009). In 2010, the entrance building and tea rooms were refurbished.

 

Into the 2010s, further buildings were added - the fish and chip shop (opened 2011) band hall (opened 2013) and pit pony stables (built 2013/14) in the Pit Village, plus a bakery (opened 2013) and chemist and photographers (opened 2016) being added to the town. St Helen's Church, in the Georgian landscape, opened in November 2015.

Replaced a Thomas Built International 3800 which is now Chapel Field Christian Schools #160

By 1993, TMSA number 6 had been replaced by a new bus on the Punta Prima run by new number 21. This was a Pegaso 6420 like number 17, but the bodywork design was different, a bit like a Merc O405 now. I'd love to know whether this was a coincidence or whether there was a real German connection here.

ift.tt/29IQU89

Originally built as Penn Central 7868, then transitioned to Conrail 7868, now we're seeing this Geep as Norfolk Southern 2923. Since retired form the NS active roster, the GP38-2 worked for three railroads, and never missed a step.

The Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa or Benthamidia kousa, Cornaceae) is a small deciduous tree native to eastern Asia. What appear to be four-petaled white flowers are actually bracts spread open below the cluster of inconspicuous yellow-green flowers.

 

It seems that the native dogwoods (Cornus florida) in Boston area were decimated by a fungal infection and people replaced them with Kousa dogwood trees which showed to be resistant to the fungus.

Replaced and left to rot

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 15-Jan-25.

 

This aircraft was delivered to Pacific Western Airlines, Canada as C-GLPW in May-80. Pacific Western was merged with Canadian Pacific to for Canadian Airlines International in Apr-87.

 

It was sold to PLM International and leased to Bahamasair in Dec-97. The aircraft continued in service until it was permanently retired at Opa Locka, FL, USA in Sep-08.

Replacing Your Home Air Filter and Why It’s Important. t.co/KxDsYhh9JM t.co/cKRH9O29RZ (via Twitter twitter.com/ProSaverApp/status/783423403420155904)

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 17-Aug-26.

 

With additional 'East Midlands, Stansted' titles

 

A very early Saab SF.340 (c/n 020), this aircraft was first flown with the Saab test registration SE-E20. It was delivered to Crossair, Switzerland as HB-AHE in Mar-85. It was leased to Tatra Air, Czechoslovakia as OK-RGS in Mar-91 and returned to Crossair as HB-AHE in Apr-92.

 

The aircraft was wet-leased to Business Air, Scotland, UK in Jul-92. The wet-lease became a dry lease when it was re-registered G-GNTC in Sep-92. it was wet-leased to British Midland Airways in Jun-96.

 

Crossair sold it back to Saab in Jul-99 while the lease to Business Air and the wet-lease to British Midland continued. It was transferred to British Midland Commuter in Mar-98 and was withdrawn from service, returned to Saab and stored in Jul-99.

 

In Oct-99 the aircraft was leased to Aurigny Air Services, It was returned to Saab in May-06 and immediately sold to Bridges Worldwide Leasing as a Cargo / Express aircraft with seats removed. It was leased to Adria Airways, Slovenia as S5-BAM in Jun-06. It was leased to Solinair, Slovenia in May-08 and operated on behalf of Bridges Aviation.

 

In Jul-11 it was transferred to Air Scorpio, Bulgaria as LZ-SAB who continued to operated it on behalf of Bridges Aviation. It was permanently retired at Sofia, Bulgaria at the end of Jun-12 and stored.

 

The aircraft was broken up at Sofia in 2016 and the parts were stored until it was put back together in 2018, preserved and displayed outside the offices of 'Rumyana Hinkova', a transportation and logistics company, Kilifarevo, Bulgaria. Updated 17-Aug-25.

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+++ 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:

The Grumman F8F (G-58, Grumman Aircraft's design designation) Bearcat was a U.S. Navy/Marine Corps single-engine, fighter aircraft. It was introduced late in World War II as a carrier-based fighter. In replacing the obsolescent F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, climb rate was an important design factor for the F8F, which was faster and lighter than the F6F carrier-based fighter. In late 1943, Grumman began development of the F8F Bearcat and deliveries from Grumman began on 21 May 1945.

In 1946, the F8F set a climb record of 6,383 fpm and held this record until it was broken by a jet fighter in 1956. Early F8Fs first flew in August 1944, followed by production aircraft starting in February 1945, the war ended before the F8F saw combat.

 

The F8F was Grumman’s last piston engine fighter Production ended in 1949, after Grumman had produced 1,265 F8F Bearcats in total. Directly after the war, the F8F was a key fighter for the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps. Since it was one of the best-handling piston fighters ever, its performance made it the top selection in 1946 for the U.S. Navy’s elite Blue Angels demonstration squadron. When the F8F became obsolete (The last ones in U.S. service were retired in 1952), it was replaced with jet fighter aircraft, the F9F Panther and the F2H Banshee.

 

From 1946 to 1954, the F8F saw its first combat during the French Indochina War, being used by French forces. Surviving Bearcats from that war were given to the Republic of Vietnam Air Force and to Cambodia, and some were mothballed. The Royal Thai Air Force also flew a number of Bearcats that were purchased from the U.S. Navy.

 

Gabon became another, rather late operator of the F8F. In the early 1960s, following the country's independence from the French Republic, aerial detachments remained inside the country. The first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon M'ba, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as his vice president. As a starting stock of flying equipment, Gabon took over twenty refurbished, former Armée de L’air F8F Bearcats from French surplus stock and used them both as advanced trainers and for operational military duties, which became more and more the Bearcats’ primary mission. After M'ba's accession to power, the press was suppressed, political demonstrations banned, freedom of expression curtailed, other political parties gradually excluded from power, and the Constitution changed along French lines to vest power in the Presidency, a post that M'ba assumed himself.

 

However, when M'ba dissolved the National Assembly in January 1964 to institute one-party rule, an army coup sought to oust him from power and restore parliamentary democracy. French paratroopers flew in within 24 hours to restore M'ba to power. At that time the small Gabonese F8F fleet was joined by a couple of former French Douglas AD-4 Skyraiders, which had been originally procured for use in the Algerian War. After the end of this conflict in 1964, the machines were used in Djibouti, Madagascar and Chad, among other places, and eight of them joined the Gabonese forces as part of the Presedential Guards, flown by French mercenaries because the Gabonese troops lacked flight and – moreover – combat experience. After a few days of fighting, the coup ended and the opposition was imprisoned, despite widespread protests and riots. French soldiers still remain in the Camp de Gaulle on the outskirts of Gabon's capital to this day.

 

After these riots, Gabon’s first official aerial installation was established in 1966: Mouila Training Center in the south-west of the country. When M'Ba died in 1967, Bongo replaced him as president. In March 1968, Bongo declared Gabon a one-party state by dissolving the BDG and establishing a new party—the Parti Democratique Gabonais (PDG). He invited all Gabonese, regardless of previous political affiliation, to participate. Bongo sought to forge a single national movement in support of the government's development policies, using the PDG as a tool to submerge the regional and tribal rivalries that had divided Gabonese politics in the past.

 

On January 25, 1972, by presidential decree signed by President Omar Bongo, the Gabonese Air Force became an official branch of the armed forces, separate from the army, and funds were allocated to replace the outdated and worn-out AD-4s and F8Fs with more adequate equipment. The implementation of this plan would take some more years, though, starting with the procurement of modern Mirage 5 fighter bombers from France in 1978, which replaced the old types until the end of the decade. In January 1980, at the initiative of President Bongo, the Air Force eventually developed and adopted a combat structure and created the dedicated Mvengue Air Base in the capital.

 

Today, Gabon has a small, professional military of about 5,000 personnel, divided into army, navy, air force, gendarmerie, and national police. Gabonese forces are oriented to the defense of the country and have not been trained for an offensive role. A well-trained, well-equipped 1,800-member guard provides security for the president.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 28 ft 3 in (8.61 m)

Wingspan: 35 ft 10 in (10.92 m)

Height: 13 ft 10 in (4.22 m)

Wing area: 244 sq ft (22.7 m²)

Aspect ratio: 5.02

Airfoil: root: NACA 23018; tip: NACA 23009

Empty weight: 7,650 lb (3,470 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 13,460 lb (6,105 kg)

 

Powerplant:

1× Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney R-2800-34W Double Wasp 18-cylinder air-cooled radial piston

engine with 2,100 hp (1,600 kW), driving a 4-bladed constant-speed propeller

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 455 mph (732 km/h, 395 kn)

Range: 1,105 mi (1,778 km, 960 nmi)

Service ceiling: 40,800 ft (12,400 m)

Rate of climb: 4,465 ft/min (22.68 m/s)

Wing loading: 42 lb/sq ft (210 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.22 hp/lb (0.36 kW/kg)

 

Armament:

4× 20 mm (.79 in) AN/M3 cannon in the outer wings

2,000 lb (907 kg) of ordnance on three prime hardpoints (incl. bombs, rocket pods, napalm tanks

or drop tanks), plus four underwing hardpoints for light loads like 5” (127 mm) HVAR unguided rockets

  

The kit and its assembly:

A rather quick/simple project that had been lingering in The Stash™ for a couple of years. The idea and inspiration: what if the French air force had left more than just a couple of Skyraiders in Northern African countries after their independence? The F8F was operated by the French Armée de l’air until 1954, even though primarily in Indochina. But some of these could have been transferred to countries like Chad, Central African Republic or Gabon, too, and from this thought this what-if model was born.

 

There are certainly better F8F kits (e. g. the Art Model kit with resin parts, including a finely detailed landing gear wells interior), but for a "budget build" or a conversion this one is a good starting point – and I had a Monogram F8F (Revell re-boxing) ready in stock. The model was basically built OOB, just with some cosmetic changes. The Monogram F8F in 1:72 holds only small surprises. It's a typical vintage Monogram kit (IIRC, the molds are from 1976) with raised (yet fine) details and vague fit - even though nothing fatal. PSR was basically necessary at any seam, esp. the unique wing/fuselage solution calls for some seam-filling. The cockpit interior is bare, but, except for the (quite nice) seat and the dashboard, nothing can be seen later. In order to pimp the interior, I added a dashboard – the kit comes with a rather symbolic one, consisting of two sections molded into the fuselage halves with an ugly seam. A styrene tube was added behind the engine block to take the propeller’s new metal axis, and a small pitot was added under the left wing, made from wire.

The clear parts (two pieces) are very transparent but came with lots of flash and massive attachment points to the sprue, what left visible marks on the parts. The landing gear is simple but O.K., very robust, but it appears quite stalky to me and the wells are totally bare. The oil cooler intakes in the wing roots are just holes, so I filled them with bits of foamed styrene. The underwing ordnance was changed into triple bazooka unguided missile launchers in the standard pylons' poristions (which had to be sanded away since they are molded into the wings' lower half), procured from an Academy P-51 kit, and on short notice I added four small bombs to the HVAR stations, from a Hobbycraft Skyraider. Not certain what they are supposed to be (maybe M47 incendiary bombs?), because of their small size and the vintage "box tail", but they could be light anti-personnel/shrapnel bombs?

  

Painting and markings:

I used the real-world Gabonese AD-4s as benchmarks – and even had a complete decal set for one of these machines (from a Hobbycraft kit) at hand. Consequently, I gave the F8F an overall NMF look, created with a base of Revell 99 (Aluminum), some single panels in Humbrol 56 (Aluminum Dope) and later a panel-shading with Humbrol 27001 (Matt Aluminum Metal Cote) and some good rubbing with a soft cotton cloth and a bit of graphite for some more depth in between the tones. Quite complex process, but it creates a nice, uneven and worn metallic look.

Parts of the cowling and the exhaust area became black, created with paint and decal material. The anti-glare panel was also painted in black, just with s slightly different tone (Revell 06, Tar Black).

 

I adopted a green cheatline as an individual aircraft marking, and the respective decals from the Hobbycraft Skyraider’s sheet were tailored accordingly to match the small F8F’s hull. A matching green tone was mixed for the wing, stabilizer and fin tips, and the propeller’s tip was painted green, too. The propeller blades’ tips received two yellow stripes on overall black – inspired by the design of the real Gabonese AD-4s’ markings.

 

All interior surfaces except for the cockpit were painted with bright green zinc primer (Revell 361, the cockpit ina darker Humbrol 226), the landing gear became silver-grey (Humbrol 56) – the former French F8Fs had kept the USN all-dark blue livery, and their landing gear would have been blue, too, but as a refurbished aircraft, stripped off of its former livery, would probably have a bare metal landing gear, too?

 

The kit received a black ink washing before aforementioned surface treatment was applied. After the addition of the decals the whole kit was sealed with a semi-gloss acrylic varnish to promote sine, except for the anti-glare panel, which became matt. Oil stains around the engine were created with Tamiya X-19 (Smoke) and soot stains around the guns and the exhaust ports were dry-painted with black acrylic paint and some graphite.

  

Well, this is, despite being more or less built OOB, a highly exotic what-if model, and I think that the NMF together with the green cheatlines suit the Bearcat well - adapting the paint scheme from a Douglas Skyraider onto the similar F8F was quite easy (and incidently the same path I had taken with another Monogram F8F in Cambodian markings some months ago).

 

I have passed St Mary a number of times since travelling to see the orchids at a nearby reserve. So with some time to kill a couple of weeks ago, I decide to call in.

 

The church is nearer to the village of Metfield than the one it is parish church for, and parking was problematic, as the church is off the main road, and the small houses and farms that make this part of Withersdale all had rather unwelcoming do not park here signs, and nearer the church, do not park on the grass signs. So where doe the visitor who arrives by car actually park? I ended up on the verge of the B road that passes close by, but the unwelcoming nature of the area had put me in a bad mood.

 

St mary is a small and simple church, a small bellcote at the west end, a fine ancient font on a new pedestal, some small but old pews and a fine roof.

 

------------------------------------------

 

(Introduction: Back in 2002, Withersdale was the 500th church on the Suffolk Churches site. You might say that the end of the journey was in view. I had recently had a conversation with some friends about writing parodies, using the style of other authors for those things we would have written anyway. One friend, a teacher, claimed to have written an entire school report in the style of Raymond Chandler. Some writers are easy to replicate - TS Eliot and Hemingway, for example - but it is harder to sustain a parody when the parodied writer is best known for going on at length. I said I'd have a go at Proust, which I did here, and James Joyce for church 501, Bungay St Mary. It's not for me to say how successful the parodies are, although the Joyce one has been complimented kindly by some of the man's fans. Nobody has ever said anything about the Withersdale parody - perhaps more people read Joyce than Proust, I don't know. In 2007, when I began revisiting Suffolk churches to replace the old photographs I had taken with brand spanking new digital ones, I came back to Withersdale. Unfortunately, I got here at the dullest hour on a dull day, and so the exteriors are not what I had hoped for. Still, that's a good excuse to go back again. As for the text, I have not seen any reason to change it, other than to add one hyperlink to a page on the Norfolk Churches site. I realise that this will be an annoyance for anyone wanting to find out more about Withersdale and its church. For this, I apologise.)

 

2002: For a long time, I used to read French novels in bed. And then, mid-morning, I'd get up and wander through an industrial wasteland.

I was living in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, in the years when the coal and steel industries were finally coming to an end, and I'd walk through the battlefields of Brightside and Attercliffe, wondering at the abandoned factories and mills, and the wasted infrastructure, the boarded-up pubs and shops, the graffiti, the row upon row of derelict terraces. One day, I even found an old railway station, the door onto the platform hanging open, the wind howling through the gap into the tunnel, the line going nowhere.

 

Often, I would imagine what these places had once been like, when they were still alive, for I was not born to this, coming as I did from the flat fields of East Anglia. The first time I saw it all, it was already over. I loved the litany of names: Attercliffe and Brightside I have already mentioned, and there was Eccleshall and Carbrook, Intake and Millhouses. I don't know now if I knew them from visiting them, or only knew them from their names, bold on the fronts of buses.

 

I would wander alone through the broken streets, gazing up at the brick-faced shells, and imagine them full of activity, and try to decide what this winch had been for, or the platform where the lorries came, or the booth by the gate. This was all the evidence, and this was all I had to go on, as I reconstructed a world I had never seen. And what really interested me was not the places at all, but the people who had once inhabited them; those people who had now gone, but these buildings were once the focus of their lives, and they had known them very differently to the way I was knowing them now.

 

Using material evidence to reconstruct their activities, I could perhaps begin to understand their lives.

 

I was thinking about this as I cycled along the Waveney valley - but then something else happened. I had come to Withersdale from Weybread, up on the Norfolk border. In fact, I had reached Weybread from the northern side of the Waveney, since the most direct route from Mendham to Weybread had been across the river into Norfolk, and through the lanes that lead into Harleston. About fifteen years before all this happened, when I was living on the south coast of England, I had had a brief but passionate affair with a girl who came from Alburgh, a Norfolk village on the other side of the border to Mendham. I hadn't thought of this for years, but suddenly seeing the name of the village, which I had never visited, on a road sign, startled me. And then something extraordinary happened. As I sat on my bike, savouring this shock of recognition, an agricultural lorry passed me, and I noticed that the name of the town painted on the side of the lorry was the same south coast town where this occured.

 

I was still wondering at this as I threaded through the back lanes between Weybread and Withersdale, a world away from the post-industrial ruins of South Yorkshire, or the misery of the south coast, for I had not often been happy there, and never wish to be so poor or so far from home again. When I moved to the south, I had not many months since finished an increasingly pointless relationship that should have stopped after six months, and unfortunately went on for another two years. My habit of reading Proust in bed had come towards the end of this; that, and wandering around east Sheffield, were, I think, displacement activities of a kind, not only to avoid spending too much time with her, but also to avoid doing anything about it. It also had much to do with me leaving Sheffield shortly afterwards. It was a year later that I moved to the south coast, and I was already seeing the girl who would become my wife. And then I met this woman from a Norfolk village shortly after I arrived in the unfamiliar coastal town, in the warmest October of the century. The leaves were only just beginning to colour and fall, and I remembered the way the woods rode the Downs, and the way the fog hid all day in the valleys.

 

And then I thought, well, it must have been more than fifteen years ago, because I could remember leaving her bed in the early hours of one Friday morning, the paleness just beginning to appear in the east, and being stopped on a roadblock on the bypass, where it joined the Lewes road. It was the night that the IRA had bombed the Tory party conference at the Grand Hotel, and everyone leaving town was being stopped and questioned. I had no idea what had happened, and the policeman didn't tell me. As I explained where I had been, I watched the police coaches hurtling back westwards out of Kent, away from the miners' strike.

 

When I had made my life less complicated, I used to cycle around the Sussex lanes, finding lonely churches and sitting in them. When I'd lived in Sheffield, I liked to wander up on to the moors, perhaps to Bradfield, where the church looks out on an empty sky. Standing in its doorway took me out of the world altogether, and was the first time I experienced that sense of communion with the past. St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, reminded me a bit of Bradfield, although busy Suffolk is much noisier than the peace around Sheffield. Here was an ancient space, plainly Norman in origin, that had stood here stubbornly while the world changed around it. Wars had come and gone, times of great prosperity had warmed it and depressions had made it cold again. Disease and famine had emptied it, until the irrepressible energy of human activity had restored it to life. And it was still here, so unlike our own transitory existences. But perhaps there is a resilience in stone that reflects the human spirit.

 

What would I have found most extraordinary back then, on the south coast? That we would now have known ten years of relative peace in Ireland? That the time of the Tories would finally come to an end, and it would be hard to imagine them ever regaining power? That I would be married with children in East Anglia? I think I would have found the Tories being out of power least believable.

 

I had been looking forward to reaching Withersdale for several years, and it had increasingly become the sole quest of the day, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy.

 

Everybody who writes about it seems to like it, Mortlock calling it a dear little church, Simon Jenkins thought it unusually atmospheric, and Arthur Mee writes as though he actually visited the place for a change, and curiously mentions half a dozen pathetic old benches... which once held an honoured place in God's house and are now a shelter from the sun for a few of God's sheep, which is typical of barmy Arthur.

The church sits right beside the busy Halesworth to Harleston road, which you wouldn't expect from its reputation for being remote and peaceful. Incidentally, this is a road I always find difficult when I'm cycling, since it bends and twists through high Suffolk, and you can never be entirely clear about which way it is heading, and several times I have made the mistake of absent-mindedly turning for Harleston when I wanted Halesworth, and so on. Withersdale was the last piece of the jigsaw in north east Suffolk for me; I had visited every single other medieval church beyond the curve that connects Diss in Norfolk to Halesworth, and then the sea.

 

It was a crisp, bright afternoon towards the end of February, and my next stop after Withersdale would be the railway station at Halesworth, where I planned to catch the train that left at 4.30pm, en route from Lowestoft to Ipswich. Before Halesworth, the train would pass through Beccles, where I had stepped off of it earlier that morning, and cycled off to visit the churches of Worlingham, Mettingham and Shipmeadow workhouse. It was after this that I had made the somewhat convoluted journey through the Saints to reach Mendham in the early afternoon. Each of the Saints is an event, as if a counterpoint to the time it takes to travel through them, creating a history, a tradition of the distance, each one connected to and yet significantly different from the others, and sometimes events can overtake history and change its course, as I had discovered.

 

Now, I was nine miles from Halesworth, with less than an hour to go before the train left, which would give me time to visit Withersdale, but would concentrate my mind, since the 4.30pm train was the last that I could reasonably catch, having no lights, and needing to cycle a further two miles from the station when I arrived in Ipswich.

 

So, if I was to decide that the setting or interior of St Mary Magdalene were in any way timeless, this would have to be set against a pressing urgency - or, if not quite an urgency, a sense that an urgency would be created if I did not remain aware of the passing of time.

 

I stepped through the gate into the sloping churchyard, passing 18th and 19th century headstones as I walked to the east of the building. Here, I discovered that the church was not entirely rendered rubble, for the east wall had been partly rebuilt in red brick, and the window frame above was made of wood, which would be a memory of times past, and a hint of things to come.

 

The south side of the building was dappled in winter sunlight, and I remembered how Arthur Mee had found this church surrounded by elm trees, and how their leaves must have sent shadows scurrying along this wall, and how the sunlight had been washing it for generations. I wondered if there could be some kind of photographic effect, perhaps caused by chemicals in the rendering responding to the photons in the sunlight, and I remembered how Proust had watched from his curtained apartment the streets below, imagining scenes into stillness. I thought of my own small world, my transitory journey, and how this would be a blink of an eye, a relative stillness in comparison to the long centuries the wall had stood, and how everything I cared about, my passions, hopes and fears, signified nothing beside it.

 

I looked up at the pretty weather-boarded turret, and the little porch below. Although the church is visibly Norman in construction, the turret and porch have a later historical resonance, because they were the gift of William Sancroft, later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, who in the long years of the 17th century Commonwealth lived at nearby Fressingfield, during the time that the episcopal government of the Church of England was supressed.

 

Fressingfield was his native village, but Fressingfield church is a medieval wonder, and it is not too fanciful to imagine that Sancroft made St Mary Magdalene his quiet project, although of course it cannot be the work of one man, or even one generation or epoch, but his touch must have fallen firmly here.

 

I stepped inside to a cool light suffusing the nave and chancel, and I climbed up to the tiny gallery at the west end to look down on the space below. St Mary Magdalene is a relatively unspoiled prayerbook church, almost entirely of the 17th century, with some sympathetic Victorian additions. The pulpit is against the north wall as at All Saints South Elmham, to take full advantage of the theatrical sunlight from the windows in the south wall. The pulpit is tiny, barely two feet across, and the benches face it, and so do the box pews to south and east.

 

The woodwork is mellow, breathing a calmness into the silence, while the chancel beyond is gorgeous, a tiny altar surrounded by three-sided rails sitting beneath the elegant window, two brass vases of pussywillow sweet upon its cloth. I stood for some time looking down, and then descended, finding a superb font carved with a tree of life and a grinning face. It may be Norman, it may be older. It is set upon a modern brick base, but even this is fitting, as are the benches with strange ends, with a hole for the candlepricks, and I ran my hand over the golden curve, an eroticism stirring in the memory as the scent of flowers in a window splay touched my senses, an echo of a spring evening some twenty years before, when I had first ever thought myself in love, and this came to me now.

There was a crisp confidence to this building; it was expressed in the curious elegance of the 17th century English Church which had furnished it that, despite so many traumas, had finally come to represent the simplicity of the Puritans, the seemliness of the Anglicans, and that was the Elizabethan Settlement of the previous century fulfilled. Here Sancroft waited, while the world turned upside down around him, and then Cromwell died, and so too did the Puritan project; Sancroft became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, witnessing its destruction by fire in 1666, and overseeing its complete rebuilding in the classical style, and such a contrast with St Mary Magdalene it must have made that perhaps he sometimes wished he was back here. A High Anglican, he crowned the Catholic James II with some misgivings, but then refused to recognise the Protestant coup of William III in 1688, returning once more to Suffolk, where he died.

 

I sat in the shadowed pew and felt the distant beat, the quiet trick of history turned and played. I thought of the certainty that this interior represented, the triumph of the will, of belief over mystery, and how the rationalist, superstitious 18th century worshippers here could not have conceived of the great sacramental fire that would one day flame out of Oxford and lick them clean.

 

I sat there, long enough to forget that I must of necessity move on, and the place began to cast a spell which I thought mostly due to the light, which was becoming pale as the sun faded beyond the distant trees, or perhaps the silence, but I knew in fact it was because of the matter on my mind.

 

You see, there's another thing. A few days before my visit to Withersdale I had spent a weekend abroad with three female friends, one of whom I felt increasingly drawn to, to the extent that I wondered if anything might come of it. This was also on my mind as I sat in the neat coolness of St Mary Magdalene, looking at the pussy willows in the altar vases, and talking to someone, possibly God.

 

How to understand flowers on altars, I wonder. How the 18th century puritans who furnished this place would be appalled! And yet they were perfect, as if the entire building had been constructed and furnished for them to be placed here, on this day, at this time, with the late afternoon light glancing down the hillside and leading my gaze to the brass vases. What did they mean to me, in comparison with their meaning for the people who placed them there? I ought to mention that the friends I went away with were all younger then me, at least twelve years, and it is to my great delight how younger people reinvent the world I think I understand, just as I must have done, and still do for people that much older than me. This constant process of reinterpretation must be immensely annoying for those who think they have grown old and wise, but I rejoice in it; it is a beautiful chaos, and keeps the world fresh and new, and history could not exist without it. By history, I mean of course the gradual process of constant change, which was also Newman's definition of the word tradition, rather than anything about dates and famous people.

 

So I sat there, and wondered if I should try and make something happen with the woman I mentioned, if I should tell her how I felt, and discover if what seemed to be the case was actually so, and so as I sit here now, writing this, I know the full story, and how it finally ended some weeks later, and this makes complete the circle from the moment I crossed the Waveney at Mendham, putting in chain an irrevokable sequence that would lead me here now to this computer keyboard, on this sunny spring evening in Ipswich. In A L'ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, Proust remembers crossing France by train at night, and the dislocation and alienation of being hurtled through an invisible, unfamiliar landscape. He cannot sleep, and in the middle of the night the train stops in a secret valley, far from the nearest town, perhaps because there is a station, or because the track is blocked, I don't remember. He opens the carriage window; it is a hot, sultry night.

 

Suddenly, a woman appears from the nearest cottage, with a jug of coffee, and he watches her give the coffee to a group of passengers, or perhaps they were the men removing the blockage, which I think was a tree, but may have been an animal of some kind, or perhaps it was to do with a swollen river. Proust thinks of her life in this lost valley ...from which its congregated summits hid the rest of the world, she could never see anyone save those in the trains which stopped for a moment only.

 

She moves back down the track, and gives the narrator some coffee. Wordlessly, he drinks it, returns the bowl, and the train starts to move, and he watches her silently as she recedes into the blackness, not knowing where he is, and only being certain that he will never see her again.

Instantly, the day is magnified, signified: Il faisait grand jour maintenant, says the narrator, je m'eloignais de l'aurore... This is history, thousands of these events, infuriatingly disparate and yet somehow connected. And this is so for everyone, for millions of us. I think now of Withersdale, and see connections ramifying, spiralling outwards, always becoming endless.

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/withersdale.htm

The Arlington Memorial Bridge, often shortened to Memorial Bridge, is a Neoclassical masonry, steel, and stone arch bridge with a central bascule (or drawbridge) that crosses the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. First proposed in 1886, the bridge went unbuilt for decades thanks to political quarrels over whether the bridge should be a memorial, and to whom or what. Traffic problems associated with the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in November 1921 and the desire to build a bridge in time for the bicentennial of the birth of George Washington led to its construction in 1932.

 

Designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, decorated with monumental statues depicting valor and sacrifice by sculptor Leo Friedlander, cast by Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry, Florence, Italy, Arlington Memorial Bridge defines the western end of the National Mall. The bridge's draw span was permanently closed in 1961 and replaced in 2018 by one that does not open.

 

On November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding traveled to the dedication ceremony for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. He became caught in a three-hour traffic jam because Highway Bridge (on which he traveled) could not handle the traffic. Resolving to prevent that from happening again, Harding sought an appropriation of $25,000 in 1922 to fund the work of the bridge commission. Congress approved his request on June 12, 1922.

 

Initially, the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission proposed a site for the bridge at the New York Avenue site, upstream from its current position. But the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), which had legislative authority to approve the siting and design of memorials, opposed the plan. With President Harding presiding, the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission held a joint meeting with Vice President Calvin Coolidge and the Commission of Fine Arts on December 18, 1922, at which time it was unanimously decided to adhere to the McMillan Plan and site the bridge on a line of sight between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House in Arlington National Cemetery. The parties also agreed to seek to construct a low (rather than monumental) bridge with a bascule (drawbridge) in the center to permit ship traffic to reach the Georgetown waterfront.

 

The bridge commission asked the Commission of Fine Arts whether there should be an open design competition (as in the past) or whether the bridge commission should pick a designer itself. The CFA recommended a direct selection, and provided the names of three firms: Charles A. Platt, who designed the Freer Gallery of Art; Paul Philippe Cret, who designed the Pan-American Union Building; and the firm of McKim, Mead and White. The bridge commission chose a direct selection, and picked the firm of McKim, Mead and White on April 4, 1923. Architect William Mitchell Kendall was the lead designer.

 

Members of the D.C. business community immediately pressed for resolution on whether the bridge would have a draw span. Merchants in Georgetown wanted their small harbor to be reachable by large ships. On February 17, 1923, Colonel C.O. Sherrill of the Army Corps of Engineers stated that the Corps would only approve a bridge with a draw span.

 

Kendall's first design, submitted to the CFA in May 1923, was generally well received. His plan envisioned a low, Neoclassical arch bridge. Two statues stood atop each pier on both sides of the bridge. The D.C. approaches consisted of a traffic circle around the Lincoln Memorial linked to the Potomac River by a plaza and monumental steps (the "watergate"). Two memorial columns were placed in this plaza. On the Columbia Island landing, Kendall envisioned a gigantic crossarm circumscribed by a grassy ellipse, with traffic circles at the terminus of the north and south arms. The traffic circles would accommodate Lee Highway and the Mt. Vernon Memorial Parkway. Within the ellipse were placed two 181-foot (55 m) tall memorial columns. Two circular Greek Revival temples were planned for the western shoreline. The commission was especially pleased that Kendall had the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway linked to the traffic circle around the Lincoln Memorial rather than passing beneath the bridge via an arch. (Kendall had, in fact, intended to pass it through one of the bridge's arches but forgot to make the change.) However, CFA members asked that he consider widening the bridge to 100 feet (30 m) from the proposed 80 feet (24 m). The CFA also discussed at length its long-standing proposal for a major traffic circle on Columbia Island, within which would be placed a memorial to Robert E. Lee. There was also concern whether enough space had been allotted to permit the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway, Lee Highway, and Memorial Drive (which was planned to cross the Boundary Channel via the Boundary Channel Bridge into Virginia and link with the main gate to Arlington National Cemetery). When the CFA gave its preliminary approval to the bridge design (but withheld a resolution on the approaches), models of the bridge went on public display in February 1924.

 

The Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission oversaw the design and construction of the bridge. Arlington Memorial Bridge informally opened on January 16, 1932. The dedication ceremony was headed by President Herbert Hoover who became the first person to drive across it, leading a small party of 12 cars down the George Washington Parkway to Mt. Vernon as a kick-off for Washington's 200th birthday celebration. Due to a lack of lights, ongoing construction and poor connections on the Virginia side, the bridge and highway were only open during daylight hours on Saturday and Sunday. Weekend-only operations ended on March 16, 1932. Though temporary lights were added in time for the 200th birthday, the bridge wasn't opened for day and night use until both the bridge and highway were officially illuminated on May 6, 1932.

 

Designed by architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, the neoclassical bridge is 2,163 feet (659 m) long. The bridge cost $7.25 million to build, of which $900,000 was attributed to the center draw span.

 

Construction of the Virginia approaches to the bridge took six years. The National Capital Parks Commission (NCPC) had authority to plan and approve regional transportation plans, and wanted the Virginia approaches to the bridge to be new roads. This would help stimulate housing and economic growth in Arlington County. The state of Virginia (which would provide some of the funding for the approaches) and Arlington County officials wrestled with the problems of cost and development. New roads and approaches would be the most costly (largely due to the need to obtain rights-of-way), a major consideration in the Great Depression. Yet, connecting the bridge to existing roadways would not stimulate development. The choice of a route also had political considerations, as neighborhoods vied to be the recipient of this economic stimulus. The construction of Lee Boulevard (now known as Arlington Boulevard) and Washington Boulevard eastward both provided an opportunity for economic stimulus. The state and county eventually agreed to push Lee Boulevard north around Arlington National Cemetery. When this project ran into rights-of-way problems, the state and county constructed Washington Boulevard south around the cemetery. When the Lee Boulevard problems were resolved, and with the addition of large amounts of new federal dollars, the state and county resumed construction of the Lee Boulevard approaches. The Lee Boulevard approach finally opened in October 1938. The construction of The Pentagon in 1941 and extensive war-related building south of the cemetery in 1942 led the federal government to approve a second connection by extending Washington Boulevard past Arlington National Cemetery and over Boundary Channel as well.

 

At the time it opened, the Arlington Memorial Bridge bascule span was the longest, heaviest (3,000 short tons (2,700 t)), and fastest-opening bascule span in the world.

 

The northeastern entrance to the Arlington Memorial Bridge features The Arts of War sculptures, Sacrifice and Valor, which were completed by Leo Friedlander in 1951. One of which was cast by Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence, Italy. On the pylons of each pier of the bridge are large circular discs with eagles and fasces designed by sculptor Carl Paul Jennewein.

 

The closest Metro station to the bridge is Arlington Cemetery. The bridge connects, both literally and symbolically, the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, the former home of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. This placement was done intentionally to represent the reunification of the North and the South.

 

At the southwestern terminus on Columbia Island, the bridge and its connecting roadways connect with the George Washington Memorial Parkway, State Route 27 and State Route 110. At the northeastern terminus, the bridge and its connecting roadways connect with Constitution Avenue, Independence Avenue, the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, and the District of Columbia segment of Interstate 66.

 

A peculiarity of the traffic circle at the southwestern terminus is that traffic already in the circle must yield to traffic entering the circle — the opposite of the standard rule. During morning rush hour, a portion of the traffic circle is closed to prevent mergers that would otherwise tie up rush hour traffic.

 

The center portion of the bridge was originally a metal draw span, intended to allow large vessels to pass upriver to Georgetown. However, with the construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge immediately upstream, which has no such provision, the draw mechanism was abandoned. It was opened for the last time on February 28, 1961. The bascule leaves were to be counterbalanced with scrap steel embedded in concrete, but during the Great Depression there was not enough scrap available for the project. A ship load of Swedish iron ore eventually provided the 2,400 short tons (2,200 t) needed for the counterweights.

 

Arlington Memorial Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 4, 1980.

 

The Potomac River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States that flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2), and is the fourth-largest river along the East Coast of the United States and the 21st-largest in the United States. More than 5 million people live within its watershed.

 

The river forms part of the borders between Maryland and Washington, D.C., on the left descending bank, and West Virginia and Virginia on the right descending bank. Except for a small portion of its headwaters in West Virginia, the North Branch Potomac River is considered part of Maryland to the low-water mark on the opposite bank. The South Branch Potomac River lies completely within the state of West Virginia except for its headwaters, which lie in Virginia.

 

The Potomac River runs 405 mi (652 km) from Fairfax Stone Historical Monument State Park in West Virginia on the Allegheny Plateau to Point Lookout, Maryland, and drains 14,679 sq mi (38,020 km2). The length of the river from the junction of its North and South Branches to Point Lookout is 302 mi (486 km).

 

The river has two sources. The source of the North Branch is at the Fairfax Stone located at the junction of Grant, Tucker, and Preston counties in West Virginia. The source of the South Branch is located near Hightown in northern Highland County, Virginia. The river's two branches converge just east of Green Spring in Hampshire County, West Virginia, to form the Potomac. As it flows from its headwaters down to the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac traverses five geological provinces: the Appalachian Plateau, the Ridge and Valley, the Blue Ridge, the Piedmont Plateau, and the Atlantic coastal plain.

 

Once the Potomac drops from the Piedmont to the Coastal Plain at the Atlantic Seaboard fall line at Little Falls, tides further influence the river as it passes through Washington, D.C., and beyond. Salinity in the Potomac River Estuary increases thereafter with distance downstream. The estuary also widens, reaching 11 statute miles (17 km) wide at its mouth, between Point Lookout, Maryland, and Smith Point, Virginia, before flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.

 

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly called Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with Maryland to its north and east. Washington, D.C., was named for George Washington, a Founding Father and first president of the United States. The district is named for Columbia, the female personification of the nation.

 

Washington, D.C., anchors the southern end of the Northeast megalopolis, one of the nation's largest and most influential cultural, political, and economic regions. As the seat of the U.S. federal government and several international organizations, the city is an important world political capital. The city had 20.7 million domestic visitors and 1.2 million international visitors, ranking seventh among U.S. cities as of 2022.

 

The U.S. Constitution in 1789 called for the creation of a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. As such, Washington, D.C., is not part of any state, and is not one itself. The Residence Act, adopted on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of the capital district along the Potomac River. The city was founded in 1791, and the 6th Congress held the first session in the unfinished Capitol Building in 1800 after the capital moved from Philadelphia. In 1801, the District of Columbia, formerly part of Maryland and Virginia and including the existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria, was officially recognized as the federal district; initially, the city was a separate settlement within the larger federal district. In 1846, Congress returned the land originally ceded by Virginia, including the city of Alexandria. In 1871, it created a single municipality for the remaining portion of the district, although its locally elected government only lasted three years and elective city-government did not return for over a century. There have been several unsuccessful efforts to make the district into a state since the 1880s; a statehood bill passed the House of Representatives in 2021 but was not adopted by the U.S. Senate. Designed in 1791 by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the city is divided into quadrants, which are centered around the Capitol Building and include 131 neighborhoods. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 689,545, making it the 23rd-most populous city in the U.S., third-most populous city in the Southeast after Jacksonville and Charlotte, and third-most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic after New York City and Philadelphia. Commuters from the city's Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, which includes parts of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, is the country's seventh-largest metropolitan area, with a 2023 population of 6.3 million residents.

 

The city hosts the U.S. federal government and the buildings that house government headquarters, including the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court Building, and multiple federal departments and agencies. The city is home to many national monuments and museums, located most prominently on or around the National Mall, including the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument. It hosts 177 foreign embassies and serves as the headquarters for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, and other international organizations. Many of the nation's largest industry associations, non-profit organizations, and think tanks are based in the city, including AARP, American Red Cross, Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, National Geographic Society, The Heritage Foundation, Wilson Center, and others.

 

A locally elected mayor and 13-member council have governed the district since 1973, though Congress retains the power to overturn local laws. Washington, D.C., residents are, on the federal level, politically disenfranchised since the city's residents do not have voting representation in Congress; the city's residents elect a single at-large congressional delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives who has no voting authority. The city's voters choose three presidential electors in accordance with the Twenty-third Amendment.

 

The District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of the United States, with territory previously held by the states of Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United States for the purpose of creating its federal district, which would encompass the new national capital of the United States, the City of Washington. The district came into existence, with its own judges and marshals, through the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801; previously it was the Territory of Columbia. According to specific language in the U.S. Constitution, it was 100 square miles (259 km2).

 

The district encompassed three small cities: Alexandria, formerly in Virginia, Georgetown, formerly Maryland, and the deliberately planned central core, the City of Washington. Both the White House and the United States Capitol were already completed and in use by 1800 as called for by the 1791 L'Enfant Plan for the City of Washington, although the city was not formally chartered until 1802. Beyond those cities, the remainder of the district was farmland organized by the 1801 Act into two counties, Washington County, D.C., on the Maryland side, and Alexandria County, D.C., on the Virginia side, encompassing today's Arlington County, Virginia, and the independent city of Alexandria.

 

The district was governed directly by the U.S. Congress from the beginning. Alexandria City and County were ceded back from the federal government to the commonwealth of Virginia in 1846, in a process known as retrocession, anticipating the 1850 ban on slave trading (but not slavery) in the district.

 

Washington and Georgetown retained their separate charters for seventy years, until the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871. That act cancelled the charters of the towns and brought the entire area within the district borders under one district government, ending any distinction between "the District of Columbia" and "Washington", making the two terms effectively synonymous.

 

Main article: History of Washington, D.C. § Establishment

Congress determined, in the Residence Act of 1790, that the nation's capital be on the Potomac, between the Anacostia River and today's Williamsport, Maryland, and in a federal district up to 10 miles square. The exact location was to be determined by President George Washington, familiar with the area from his nearby home and properties at Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

 

Its trans-state location reflected a compromise between the Southern and Northern states. Virginia lobbied for the selection, an idea opposed by New York and Pennsylvania, both of which had previously housed the nation's capital. Maryland, whose State House was older than that of Virginia, and like Virginia a slave state, was chosen as a compromise. At Washington's request the City of Alexandria was included in the district, though with the provision that no federal buildings could be built there. The new capital district was at about the center of the country.

 

About 2/3 of the original district was in Maryland and 1/3 in Virginia, and the wide Potomac in the middle. The future district was surveyed in 1791–92; 24 of its surviving stone markers are in Maryland, 12 in Virginia. (See Boundary Markers of the original District of Columbia.) Washington decided that the capital's location would be located between the mouth of the Anacostia River and Georgetown, which sits at the Potomac's head of navigation.

 

As specified by Article One of the United States Constitution, in fact as one of the enumerated powers of section 8, Congress assumed direct administrative control of the federal district upon its creation by the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801. There was no district governor or executive body. The U.S. House created a permanent Committee on the District of Columbia in January 1808, and the U.S. Senate established its counterpart in December 1816. These committees remained active until 1946. Thus the U.S. Congress managed the detailed day-to-day governmental needs of the district through acts of Congress—an act authorizing the purchase of fire engines and construction of a firehouse, for instance, or an act to commission three new city streets and closing two others in Georgetown.

 

The five component parts of the district operated their own governments at the lower level. The three cities within the district (Georgetown, the City of Washington, and Alexandria) operated their own municipal governments, each with a continuous history of mayors. Robert Brent, the first mayor of the City of Washington, was appointed directly by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 after the city's organization that year.

 

The remaining rural territory within the district belonged either to Alexandria County D.C., (district land west of the Potomac outside the City of Alexandria, formerly in Virginia) or to Washington County, D.C., (the unincorporated east side, formerly in Maryland, plus islands and riverbed). Both counties operated with boards of commissioners for county-level government functions. Both counties were governed by levy courts made of presidentially appointed Justices of the Peace. Prior to 1812, the levy courts had a number of members defined by the president, but after that Washington County had 7 members. In 1848, the Washington County levy court was expanded to 11 members, and in 1863 that was reduced by two to nine members.

 

The language of the establishing act of 1801 omitted any provision for district residents to vote for local, state-equivalent, or federal representatives.

 

This omission was not related to any constitutional restriction or, apparently, any rationale at all. Legal scholars in 2004 called the omission of voting rights a simple "historical accident", pointing out that the preceding Residence Act of July 16, 1790, exercising the same constitutional authority over the same territory around the Potomac, had protected the votes of the district's citizens in federal and state elections. Those citizens had indeed continued to cast ballots, from 1790 through 1800, for their U.S. House representatives and for their Maryland and Virginia state legislators. James Madison had written in the Federalist No. 43 that the citizens of the federal district should "of course" have their will represented, "derived from their own suffrages." The necessary language simply did not appear in the 1801 legislation.

 

The prospect of disenfranchisement caused immediate concern. One voice from a public meeting in January 1801, before the bill's passage, compared their situation to those who fought against British taxation without representation in the Revolutionary War—20 years prior. Despite these complaints the bill went into effect as written. Given exclusive and absolute political control, Congress did not act to restore any of these rights until the 1960s. The district still has no voting representation in Congress, and the decisions of its long-sought local government established in 1973 are still subject to close congressional review, annulment, and budget control.

 

Residents of Alexandria saw no economic advantage from being in the District. No federal buildings could be built on the south side of the Potomac, nor did they have representation in Congress. Some resistance was expressed immediately. One leading figure in the fight to retrocede through the 1820s was Thomson Francis Mason, who was elected mayor of Alexandria, D.C., four times between 1827 and 1830. Also Alexandria was a center of the profitable slave trade – the largest slave-trading company in the country, Franklin and Armfield, was located there – and Alexandria residents were afraid that if the District banned the slave trade, as seemed likely, this industry would leave the city.

 

To prevent this, Arlington held a referendum, through which voters petitioned Congress and the state of Virginia to return the portion of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River (Alexandria County) to Virginia. On July 9, 1846, Congress retroceded Alexandria County to Virginia, after which the district's slave traders relocated to Alexandria. The district's slave trade was outlawed in the Compromise of 1850. The penalty for bringing a slave into the district for sale, was freedom for the slave. Southern senators and congressmen resisted banning slavery altogether in the District, to avoid setting a precedent. The practice remained legal in the district until after secession, with the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act signed by Lincoln on April 16, 1862, which established the annual observance of Emancipation Day.

 

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 created a single new district corporation governing the entire federal territory, called the District of Columbia, thus dissolving the three major political subdivisions of the district (Port of Georgetown, the City of Washington, and Washington County) and their governments. By this time the county also contained other small settlements and nascent suburbs of Washington outside its bounded limits, such as Anacostia, which had been incorporated in 1854 as Uniontown; Fort Totten, dating at least to the Civil War; and Barry Farm, a large tract bought by the Freedmen's Bureau and granted to formerly enslaved and free-born African Americans in 1867.

 

The newly restructured district government provided for a governor appointed by the president for a 4-year term, with an 11-member council also appointed by the president, a locally elected 22-member assembly, and a five-man Board of Public Works charged with modernizing the city. The first vice-chair of that Board of Public Works was real-estate developer Alexander Robey Shepherd, the architect and proponent of the consolidating legislation. From September 1873 to June 1874, Shepherd would serve as the second, and final, governor of the District.

 

The Seal of the District of Columbia features the date 1871, recognizing the year the district's government was incorporated.

via Instagram kotaserang.net/1TQhA6p, When the sunset has come, no candle can replace it. #repost Photo by : @dilhamnandi . . #serang #kotaserang #pulautiga #sunset #island #karangantu #holiday #weekend #senja #Banten #indonesia. . kotaserang.net/1BFtNAa , May 29, 2016 at 07:46PM When the sunset has come, no candle can replace it. #repost Photo by : @dilhamnandi . . #serang #kotaserang #pulautiga #sunset #island #karangantu #holiday #weekend #senja #Banten #indonesia. . kotaserang.net/1BFtNAa #KotaSerangDotCom #KotaSerang Original Post: kotaserang.net/1TQhA6p Link Gambar: kotaserang.net/1qUjvLG By: www.kotaserang.net

Replacing skies is kind of one of my favorite challenges to (realistically) accomplish lately, and I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out! I'm also glad I took a second to think about the direction of the light and flip the replacement sky to match. These things need consideration.

  

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Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 10-May-20, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 17-Feb-22

 

'Commuter' titles replaced with the web address with a large red 'dot'.

 

Named: "Cormac / St. Cormac".

 

First flown with the British Aerospace test registration G-6-169 in May-90, this aircraft was due for lease to Discovery Airways (USA) as N887DV but the lease was cancelled and it was registered to B.Ae in Jul-90 as G-BSNS instead.

 

It was transferred to British Aerospace Inc as N887DV in Dec-90 but reverted to G-BSNS with Trident Aviation Leasing in Jun-91.

 

The aircraft was leased to Meridiana Air (Spain) in Aug-91 with the temporary Spanish registration EC-839, becoming EC-FHU in Jan-92. It returned to Trident Aviation Leasing as G-BSNS in Sep-92 and was stored at East Midlands, UK.

 

It remained stored until it was leased to Air UK in Oct-94. Air UK was renamed KLM UK in Apr-99. The aircraft was leased to KLM 'low-cost' subsidiary 'Buzz' (UK) in Jan-00 and returned to KLM UK and the lessor the following month.

 

In Jul-00 the aircraft was leased to Aer Lingus as EI-CTN in Jul-00 and carried additional 'Commuter' titles until it was replaced by the big red 'dot' in their 'aerlingus 'dot' com' sales campaign to get passengers to book online.

 

It returned to the lessor in Oct-03 and was stored at Southend, UK. The aircraft was re-registered G-BSNS again in Jan-04 prior to lease to Flightline (UK) in Aug-04.

 

It returned to the lessor in Mar-05 and was leased to Air Dolomiti (Italy) as I-ADJG in May-05 until it returned to the lessor as G-BSNS in Aug-09.

 

In Oct-09 it was sold to Fair Aviation (South Africa) as ZS-SMO. It was wet-leased to Intair Iles (Comores) between Jan/May-12 and then to Starbow Airlines between May/Aug-12.

 

The B.Ae 146 is no longer in operation but I have no date when it was retired. No further info. Updated 21-Jul-24.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 18-Feb-22 (DeNoise AI).

 

First flown in Mar-89 with the Short Brothers test registration G-BPKX, this aircraft was transferred to Shorts Aircraft Delivery Inc as N754CN later that month.

 

It was sold to State Street Bank & Trust Co in Apr-89 and leased to Business Express (USA) in Aug-89 and re-registered N829BE in Oct-89. It was returned to the lessor in Mar-94 and stored at Opa Locka, FL, USA.

 

The aircraft remained stored for over two years until it was leased to Gulfstream International Airlines in Jun-96. It was re-registered N263GA in Nov-96. It was repossessed by the lessor in Aug-97 and stored at Melbourne, FL, USA in Dec-97.

 

It was leased to FedEx Federal Express in Feb-99 and converted to a small parcel freighter (window blanks only) before being transferred to Express Airlines Germany as D-CFXA in Jun-99 and operated on behalf of FedEx.

 

The aircraft was returned to the lessor as N263GA in Dec-02 and stored. It was sold to Falcon Leasing (USA) in Nov-04 and leased to Air Cargo Carriers. It was returned to the lessor in Aug-07, re-registered N972AA and leased to Alliance Air Carriers.

 

The aircraft was sold to AFAB Capital LLC (USA) and leased again to Air Cargo Carriers in Dec-20. Now 35 years old, it's still in service. Updated 18-Feb-24.

This modern set of buildings replaced a whole block in the Old Town close to where I work, the original buildings were gutted in a huge fire. Now a mix of hotels, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, the buildings at the back and top line Southbridge.

 

But when you come behind them and down into this square you realise the whole set of buildings, like the older historic ones nearby, actually go below the bridge and down to meet the Cowgate below (the lowest street in the Old Town), so you can use this as a quick shortcut from Chambers Street or Southbridge to head down to the Cowgate, and on the way there are bars and cafes to enjoy as well.

 

Sun was just set as I was passing here, not fully dark yet but getting there, low light but the new camera seems to have handled it okay even freehand.

Replacing an earlier scanned 6"x4" print with a better version 24-Jun-22 (DeNoise AI)..

 

First flown in Oct-72 with the Douglas test registration N1341U, this aircraft was initially stored at Long Beach, CA, USA. It was originally due to be registered F-BTDA with UTA Union Transport Maritime, but that registration wasn't taken up and it was delivered to UTA as F-BTDB in Feb-73.

 

UTA was merged into Air France in Dec-92. Air France didn't really want the DC-10's and it was wet-leased to Scibe Airlift Zaire / European Airlift in Jul-93. It was immediately sub-leased, operated by Air France, to LAP Lineas Aereas Paraguayas.

 

The aircraft was returned to Scibe / European Airlift in Oct-93 and was repossessed by Air France in Dec-93 when it was stored at Brussels, Belgium. It was sold to Pegasus Capital in Jun-94 and was immediately leased to ChallengAir as OO-JOT.

 

The aircraft operated a lot of sub-lease flights over the next couple of years. Britannia Airways between Jun/Oct-94, Air Europe SpA (Italy) between Oct-94/Apr-95, TAROM Romania between May/Oct-95, Caledonian Airways between Oct/Dec-95, Air Europe SpA between Dec-95/Mar-96, Corsair (France) between Mar/Jun-96 and again between Jun/Sep-97.

 

It was returned direct to the lessor by Corsair and re-registered N13088. The aircraft was leased to Continental Airlines in Oct-97 and returned to the lessor in Sep-01, right after the '9/11' terrorist atrocity. It was now 29 years old and was permanently retired at Mojave, CA, USA. It was last noted still at Mojave in Jan-06 in basic Continental livery.

Sorry, this replaces an earlier post named "Miles of Spirals".

Worth a look in Large?

Goober Pyle replaced Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show in 1965. Gomer (Jim Nabors) spun off into the very successful Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Goober (George Lindsey) became a beloved member of The Andy Griffith Show.

 

Both The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. ended their runs by the late 1960s. While Mayberry R.F.D. continued from 1968 to 1971, where The Andy Griffith Show left off, the concept of returning Gomer to Mayberry was nixed, as the actor was given a CBS variety show of his own (which lasted two seasons). Gomer eventually returned, along with most of the original cast of The Andy Griffith Show, to the 1986 television movie Return to Mayberry. Gomer and Goober Pyle run a gas station/car repair shop called "G & G Garage", implying that Gomer's Marine career had, at some point, ended.

 

Goober appeared on 86 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show from 1964 through 1968, one episode each of Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. and The New Andy Griffith Show and then on 54 episodes of Mayberry R.F.D. until its cancellation in 1971. Following that, Lindsey spent roughly 20 years playing the character on Hee Haw from 1972 through 1992. Goober also appeared in the 1978 television movie Goober & the Truckers Paradise and the 1986 television reunion movie Return to Mayberry alongside his cousin Gomer for only the third time in television history (running the town's G 'n G gas station and auto repair shop). The characters also appeared together in one The Andy Griffith Show episode and one "Gomer Pyle USMC" episode.

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 10-Apr-22.

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 18-Feb-24.

 

Another long history. This aircraft was delivered to Britannia Airways as G-OBYC in May-96. It was sold to a lessor on delivery and leased back to Britannia Airways.

 

It was sub-leased to Britannia Airways GmbH (Germany) as D-AGYC in Apr-98 and returned to Britannia Airways (UK) as G-OBYC in Apr-99. It was leased to Britannia Airways GmbH as D-AGYC again between Mar / Nov-00.

 

The aircraft was wet-leased to Garuda Indonesia Airlines in Jan-03 for a Haj Pilgrimage operation, returning to Britannia Airways in Mar-03. The wet-lease to Garuda was repeated between Dec-03 / Mar-04 and Dec-04 / Feb-05.

 

Britannia Airways was renamed Thomsonfly .com in May-05 and the Haj Pilgrimage wet-lease to Garuda was repeated between Dec-05 / Feb-06. In Jul-06 the aircraft was returned to the lessor and leased to Air Italy as I-AIGG in Aug-06.

 

Air Italy operated Haj Pilgrimage flights for Saudia - Saudi Arabian Airlines between Dec-09 / Jan-10, Oct / Dec-10, Sep / Nov-11 and Sep / Nov-12. In Apr-13 Air Italy merged with MeridianaFly to form the 'new' Meridiana. The Meridiana name was discontinued when it became Air Italy again in Mar-18.

 

The aircraft was withdrawn from service and stored at Milan - Malpensa in Jan-19. It was ferried to Tel Aviv, Israel in Mar-19 and returned to the lessor.

 

It was sold UPS United Parcel Service a few days later and converted to full freighter configuration with a main deck cargo door in Aug-19 when it was registered N392UP. The aircraft entered service in Sep-19. Current, updated 18-Feb-24.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 25-Feb-25.

 

First flown in Mar-88 with the British Aerospace (Avro) test registration G-5-099, this aircraft was delivered to Trident Aviation Leasing and leased to Loganair as G-OLCA in Jul-88.

 

It was wet-leased to British Airways for three months between May / Jul-90 and wet-leased to NortJet (a Spanish charter airline) for four months between Sep / Nov-90. It was also wet-leased to AirSur (Spain) between Dec-90 / Feb-91.

 

The aircraft was returned to British Aerospace Asset Management in Nov-91 and stored until it was leased to Air UK for three months between Jan / Mar-92. A few days later it was leased to LAR Transregional (Portugal) and returned to the lessor in Oct-92.

 

It was immediately leased to Malmo Aviation (Sweden) and returned to the lessor in Feb-93. The aircraft was leased to Jersey European Airways in Mar-93 and was re-registered G-JEAJ in Sep-93. It was wet-leased to Malmo Aviation in Mar-98 and returned to Jersey European the following month.

 

In Jun-00 Jersey European was renamed British European Airways (the original British European [BEA] was merged with BOAC to form British Airways in 1974). This British European was renamed FlyBe Airlines in Jul-02.

 

The aircraft was returned to the lessor and stored at Kemble, UK in Oct-06. It was ferried to Bacau, Romania in Mar-07 and converted to B.Ae 146-200QT standard with the addition of a main deck cargo door.

 

It was due to be leased to Amerer Air (Austria) as OE-IAA but the lease wasn't taken up and the aircraft was ferried to Southend, UK, in Jun-08 for further storage. It returned to Bacau in Dec-08 and returned to long-term storage. Converting it to a freighter appears to have been a waste of money as it was broken up at Bacau, Romania in 2015. Updated 25-Jan-23.

Replacing a digital photo with a better version 29-Dec-22.

 

'Real Norwegian Edvard Munch' tail livery.

 

This aircraft was delivered to a leasing company and leased to Air Caledonie International (Aircalin) as F-ODGX in Jun-89. It was returned to the lessor in May-04.

 

It was immediately sold to Airwork (New Zealand) Ltd as ZK-PLU and leased to Palau Micronesia Air in Jul-04. Unfortunately it didn't stay long and was returned to Airwork (NZ) Ltd at the end of Dec-04 and stored at Christchurch, New Zealand in Jan-05.

 

The aircraft was leased to Norwegian Air Shuttle as LN-KKS in Apr-05. It returned to the lessor in May-12 and was permanently retired at Stuttgart, AR, USA. The registration was cancelled the same month.

 

I also have a shot of this with Aircalin at ...

www.flickr.com/photos/kenfielding/6237485227

On 23 March 1997, 91014 has arrived at Doncaster on the 0900 (Sun) Kings Cross - Edinburgh. It will be replaced by 91018 and '14 will go into Works.

One of the 11 new 2015 CE's replacing the '03s. A 2015 IC CE with a MaxxForce DT, this bus is replacing bus 03-39.

Replacing an earlier scanned 6"x4" print with a better version 17-Feb-19.

 

Operating a Football Charter bringing fans of Galatasaray who were playing Manchester United. It was a 3-3 draw.

 

The only Istanbul Airlines B737-400 to have round 'dots' over the i's, all the rest had square 'dots'. Hows that for a piece of useless information!

 

A long history and a lifetime of mostly short leases... This aircraft was delivered to the GPA Group Ltd and leased to SAHSA Airlines (Servicio Aéreo de Honduras S.A.) as HR-SHL in Aug-90, it didn't stay long and was returned to the lessor in Feb-91.

 

It was leased to VASP Brasil as PP-SOH in Apr-91 and returned to the lessor in Mar-92. In Apr-92 the aircraft was leased to MAS Malaysian Airline System as 9M-MJR and returned to the lessor in Apr-93.

 

Two weeks later it was leased to Istanbul Airlines as TC-AYA. It was wet-leased to Carnival Airlines (USA) between Nov-95/Apr-95, and to Myanmar Airways International between Nov-96/Jun-97. It was returned to the lessor in Jul-00 as N683GE and stored (Istanbul Airlines ceased operations in Aug-00!).

 

The aircraft was leased to Garuda Indonesia Airlines as PK-GWW in Jan-01 and it returned to the lessor in Feb-06. It was re-registered N683GE again the Mar-06 and leased to Orenburg Airlines (Orenair) as VP-BGQ later that month. It returned to the lessor as N837TM in Apr-14 and was stored at Roswell, NM, USA.

 

It was sold to Jetran LLC in Dec-14 and moved to San Jose, Costa Rica is Jan-15 where its storage continued. In Apr-15 the aircraft was sold to the Texas Aviation Group LLC and remained stored at San Jose until it moved to Dothan, AL, USA in Sep-15 for freighter conversion.

 

It was converted to freighter configuration in early 2016 and was due to be leased to Modern Transportes Aereos (Brasil) as PP-YBB but the lease was cancelled.

 

Instead, it was sold to Airwork Flight Operations Ltd (New Zealand) as ZK-PAT in Jul-16 and operates on behalf of Parcel Air. Now 32 years old it continues in service. Updated 19-Oct-22.

I replaced it . This is after my new edit. On the old one I uploaded earlier today, the quality sucked ass on the left side, so I spent like 20 minutes or so on the retouching part on iPhoto...it took to effing long...but it's worth it :) I know it's not perfect...'cause I don't wanna spend like an hour on it...but it's way better :)

 

Enjoy :)

   

On black

 

Twitter | Formspring

Replacing an earlier scanned 6"x4" print with a better version 20-Aug-21 (DeNoiseAI).

 

Typical Manchester weather!!! A grey day and a grey aircraft don't go well together.

 

This aircraft was first flown in Jul-86 as 82-0074, it was delivered to USA Foreign Military Sales in Feb-87 and was transferred to the RSAF Royal Saudi Air Force as 1814 on the same day. As far as I'm aware, the aircraft is still operational. Current (Apr-18).

Garden City

Replacing an earlier scanned slide with a better version 13-Dec-15.

 

Delivered to Continental Airlines in Feb-67 as N17328, the aircraft was sold to the joint company Malaysia-Singapore Airlines in Jun-72 as 9V-BEW. Singapore Airlines retained it when the two companies split up in Sep-72. In Dec-80 it was sold to Eagle Air (Iceland) as TF-VLJ. Transafrica Senegal wet-leased it from Feb/Apr-81. It was wet-leased to Libyan Arab Airlines between Jun-81 & Mar-84. The aircraft was sold to the Boeing Military Airplane Company in Jun-86 as N419B. Parts of it were used in the US Air Force KC-135E conversion programme and the rest of it was stored at Davis-Monthan AFB in 1987 and it was subsequently broken up.

This beautiful setting sun is about to be replaced with a gorgeous moon........Okay, that's probably stretching it for this challenge but I just had to get this sunset in! lol

Replacing my old P38 Range Rover

Replacing the usual Boeing 787-9.

Replacing an earlier scanned print with a better version 16-Mar-22 (DeNoise AI).

 

This aircraft was delivered to Western Airlines as N913WA in Jul-79. Western was merged into Delta Air Lines in Apr-87. It was sold to UAS United Aviation Services in Jun-88 and was leased to Scanair (a SAS subsidiary) later the same month.

 

It was re-registered SE-DHS in Dec-88. Scanair was renamed Premiair in Jan-94 and in Dec-96 Premiair was bought out by the UK based Airtours Group and the aircraft was re-registered OY-CNS.

 

It was transferred to Airtours International Airways as G-DPSP in Aug-00. In May-02 Airtours was renamed MyTravel Airways. By this time the aircraft was 25 years old and as the DC-10's would soon be retired they were left in basic Airtours livery with MyTravel titles.

 

The aircraft was retired and stored at Exeter, UK in Sep-03. It was ferried to Kemble UK in Jan-04 where it was due to be broken up. It was repainted as 'Oriental Airways' in Apr-04 and was 're-registered' with the fictional registration G-BPPL for a TV film.

 

It was sold to Executive Aerospace in Oct-04 and 'exported to Swaziland' as 3D-MRR. It was ferried to Johannesburg in Nov-04 and sold to Interlink Airways. It operated until May-05 when it was permanently retired at Johannesburg.

 

It was noted at Johannesburg in deteriorating condition in Feb-08 and still in basic Airtours livery. Although it was no longer flyable, it was re-registered S9-GAP around Apr-09 and re-registered ZS-GAP to Global Aviation Investments (Pty) Ltd in Mar-12.

 

It was last noted still at Johannesburg in Dec-12. I'm advised that it was finally broken up in Oct-15.

still quite new at HDR.. replaced the image...

Some background:

The MBR-04 series were the first combat-ready Destroids and the most successful land-combat weapon Destroids that were built with OverTechnology of Macross. The abbreviation MBR (Main Battle Robot) indicates the model was developed as a walking humanoid weapon emphasizing the heavy armor firepower of an artillery combat vehicle, designed to replace mainline battle tanks. The Type 04 series was developed jointly by Viggers and Chrauler. Unlike the variable fighters, which had to be designed to accommodate transformation mechanisms, the MBR series featured a structure with a large capacity that allowed plenty of room for machinery and armor.

 

The initial development line, the "Tomahawk" multipurpose battle robot and comparable in its intended role with former main battle tanks, had inferior anti-aircraft abilities, even though it boasted firepower like no other biped vehicle from the Destroid series. Originally, the Tomahawk was just called "MBR Mk. I", but once its systems and structural elements became the basis for other models, its designation changed into the "Type 04" Destroid. The main frame from the waist down, a module which consolidated the thermonuclear reactor and ambulatory OverTechnology system of the Destroids, was common to all of the Type 04 series of biped battle robots. Production line integration using this module was a key goal of Destroid development, and the quick development of further variants.

 

The ADR-04-Mk. X Defender Destroid was one of these family members, a walking weapon developed using OverTechnology for deployment by the United Nations Military. During development of the MBR-04-Mk I, a version of the Destroid ambulatory system with the anti-aircraft Contraves system (for use during the early stages of battle) was simultaneously being developed in a joint effort by Viggers-Chrauler under direction from the United Nations. This initial support Destroid, tentatively designated ADR-04-Mk. II, which still shared many components and even hull sections with the Tomahawk, did not progress beyond prototype stage - primarily because of a focus on the Tomahawk as UN's primary ground weapon. It nevertheless provided vital input for the ADR-04-Mk. X Defender, which became an important defensive asset to protect ground troops and vital locations, as well as for operations in space on board of the SDF-1.

 

Designed for the purpose of super-long-range firing in atmosphere and space, the Defender was rolled out in March 2009 and immediately put into action against the Zentraedi military. Unfortunately, the cost of the unit was high and posed significant difficulties for manufacturing, especially installing the high-definition targeting system, which lead to a bottleneck during mass production.

 

The ADR-04-Mk. X Defender's only weapons were two stub arms, each featuring a pair of large-caliber, specialized interception capability guns instead of manipulators, similar to the eventual mass-produced MBR-04-Mk. VI Tomahawk. The anti-aircraft engagement model (anti-tank class) wide-bore guns each fired 500 rounds per minute and all four barrels firing in combination were able to unleash continuous 2,000 rounds per minute, even though only short bursts of four rounds or just single shots were typically fired to save ammunition. The 78 mm rounds were aimed via an Erlikon Contraves fire control system and fired at an impressive muzzle velocity of 3,300 meters per second. A wide range of ammunition types could be fired, including HE, AP, APDS high speed, massive kinetic impact rounds, EMP grenades and rounds with chaff/flare/thermal mist charges. The internal belt magazines made it was possible to load up to three different types per twin gun and deliberately switch between them. The overall supply was, however, rather limited.

 

The rotating mechanism structure of the upper body allowed the unit to respond quickly to enemies approaching even from the rear, for a full 360° coverage of the whole hemisphere above the Destroid. Due to the independent arms, the Defender could even engage two targets separately and split its firepower among them. Additionally, the targeting system was capable of long-range firing in space and could perform extremely precise shooting at long distances in a vacuum/zero-G environment. Hence, the Defender Destroid was more a next generation anti-aircraft tank and in service frequently moonlighted as a movable defensive turret. However, despite featuring a common Destroid ambulatory system, the Defender's mobility was rather limited in direct comparison with a variable fighter Battroid, and it lacked any significant close-combat capability, so that it remained a dedicated support vehicle for other combat units.

 

180 ADR-04-Mk. X Defenders were ordered, built and operated by UN ground and space forces, about half of them were deployed on board of SDF-1. During the First Space War, around sixty more Defenders were converted from revamped MBR-04 series chassis, mostly from battle-damaged Tomahawks, but some later Phalanx' units were modified, too.

During its career the Defender was gradually upgraded with better sensors and radar systems, and its armament was augmented, too. A common upgrade were enlarged ammunition bays on the shoulders that could hold 50 more rounds per gun, even though this stressed the ambulatory system since the Defender's center of gravity was raised. Therefore, this modification was almost exclusively executed among stationary "gun turret" units. Another late upgrade was the addition of launch rails for AMM-1 anti-aircraft missiles on the gun pods and/or the torso. Again, this was almost exclusively implemented on stationary Defenders.

 

A short-range sub-variant, under the project handle "Cheyenne", was developed in 2010, too, but it was only produced in small number for evaluation purposes. It was based on the Defender's structure, but it carried a different armament, consisting of a pair of 37 mm six-barrel gatling guns plus AMM-1 missiles, and a more clutter-resistant radar system against fast and low-flying targets. The Cheyenne was intended as a complementary aerial defense unit, but the results from field tests were not convincing, so that the project was mothballed. However, in 2012 the concept was developed further into the ADR-04-Mk.XI "Manticore", which was fully tailored to the short-range defense role.

  

General characteristics:

Equipment Type: aerial defense robot, series 04

Government: U.N. Spacy

Manufacturer: Viggers/Chrauler

Introduction: March 2009

Accommodation: 1 pilot

 

Dimensions:

Height 11.37 meters (overall)

10.73 meters (w/o surveillance radar antenna)

Length 4.48 meters (hull only)

7.85 meters (guns forward)

Width 8.6 meters

Mass: 27.1 metric tons

 

Power Plant:

Kranss-Maffai MT828 thermonuclear reactor, output rated at 2800 shp;

plus an auxiliary GE EM10T fuel power generator, output rated at 510 kW

 

Propulsion:

2x thrust nozzles mounted in the lower back region, allowing the capability to perform jumps,

plus several vernier nozzles around the hull for Zero-G manoeuvers

 

Performance:

Max. walking speed: 72 kph when fully loaded

 

Design features:

- Detachable weapons bay (attaches to the main body via two main locks);

- Type 966 PFG Contraves radar and fire control set (a.k.a. Contraves II)

with respective heat exchanger on the upper back

- Rotating surveillance antenna for full 360° air space coverage

- Optical sensor unit equipped with four camera eyes, moving along a vertical slit,

protected by a polarized light shield;

- Capable of performing Zero-G manoeuvers via 16 x thrust nozzles (mounted around the hull);

- Reactor radiator with exhaust ports in the rear;

- Cockpit can be separated from the body in an emergency (only the cockpit block is recovered);

- Option pack featuring missiles or enlarged ammunition bays;

 

Armament:

2x Erlikon 78mm liquid-cooled high-speed 2-barrel automatic cannon with 200 rounds each,

mounted as arms

  

The kit and its assembly:

A kind of nostalgia trip, because my first ever mecha kit I bought and built in the Eighties was this 1:100 Destroid Defender! It still exists, even though only as a re-built model, and I thought that it was about time to build another, “better” one, to complete my collection of canonical Macross Destroids.

 

With this objective, the vintage kit was built basically OOB, just with some detail enhancements. The biggest structural change is a new hip joint arrangement, made from steel wire. It allows a more or less flexible 3D posture of the legs, for a more dynamic “walking” pose, and the resulting gaps were filled with paper tissue drenched in white glue and acrylic paint.

A more cosmetic change concerns the Defender’s optical sensor array on its “head”. OOB it just consists of a wide “slit” with a square window – very basic, but that’s how the defender is depicted in the TV series. However, I have a Macross artbook with original design sketches from Studio Nue, which reveal more details of this arrangement, and these include a kind of louvre that covers the mobile sensor array’s guide rails, and the sensor array itself consists of several smaller optical units – the relatively new 1:72 Defender from WAVE features these details, too, but the old 1:72 Defender from Arii (and later Bandai) also only has a red box, even though under a clear cover, which is IMHO dubious, though. The louvres were created from hemispherical styrene profile bits, the sensor array was scratched with a front wheel from an 1:100 VF-1 and more styrene bits.

 

The guns/arms were taken OOB, but I reduced the opening at the shoulder (and with it the angle the arms can be swiveled) with styrene profile material, which also hides the foo fit of the shoulder halves that hold the guns and a reinforcement styrene plate inside of them.

While I could have enlarged the ammunition boxes on the Defender’s shoulders (they are extended backwards), I left them in the original and OOB configuration. Another hull mod I eventually did not carry out were clear replacements for the molded searchlights. Having some visible depth and true clear covers would have been nice, but then I doubted the benefits vs. the mess their integration into the body would mean, so that I went for a simple paint solution (see below).

 

A final cosmetic modification tried to improve the look of the shanks – but it did not help much. On the Defender, there are two continuous ridges that run across the lower legs. This is a molding simplification and wrong because the Defender (and all other 04-Series chassis’) only features the ends of the ridges.

I tried to sand the inner sections away, but upon gluing the parts finally together I realized that the fit of these parts is abysmal, and PSRing on the resulting concave surface between the leftover humps was a nightmare. Did not work well, and it looks poor.

 

With this in mind, a general word about the Arii 1:100 Destroids with the Series 04 chassis: there are three kits (Defender, Tomahawk and Phalanx), and you’d expect that these used the same lower body just with different torsos. But that’s not the case – they are all different, and the Defender is certainly the worst version, with its odd “toe” construction, the continuous ridges and the horrible fit of the lower leg halves as well as the shoulders that hold the stub arms. The Tomahawk is better, but also challenging, and IMHO, when you are only looking for the lower body section, the Phalanx is the best kit or the trio.

  

Painting and markings:

This Defender was supposed to remain canonical and close to the OOB finish, so this became a simple affair.

All Macross Destroids tend to carry a uniform livery, and esp. the Tomahawk/Defender/Phalanx family is kept in murky/dull tones of green, brown and ochre: unpretentious "mud movers".

The Defender appears to carry an overall olive drab livery, and I settled on RAL 7008 (Khakigrau), which is - according to the RAL color list - supposed to be a shade of grey, but it comes out as a dull, yellowish green-brown.

This tone was applied overall from a rattle can, and the few contrast sections like the ammunition boxes or the dust guards of the knee joints were painted with NATO olive green (RAL 6014, Gelboliv, Revell 46). The hull was later treated with Modelmaster Olive Drab (FS 34087), which adds a more greenish hue to the basic paint.

 

The kit received a thorough black ink washing, then some dry-brushing with Humbrol 72 (Khaki Drill) was applied. The decals came next, taken from the OOB sheet, plus four decals for those vernier thrusters that had not been molded into the kit’s surface. The only change is a different piece of “nose art” on the left leg, replacing the original, rather small decal. It actually belongs to a Czech AF MiG-21MF (one of the two famous Fishbeds from Pardubice in 1989, aircraft “1114”) and filled the bumpy area over the lower leg’s seam (see above) well – a kind of visual distraction from the PSR mess underneath...

 

Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish, its major sub-assemblies put together. The optical sensors received lenses with clear paint over a silver base. The large searchlights were painted, too, with a silver base plus white and clear blue reflections on top, covered with a generous coat of Humbrol’s Clearfix to mimic a clear, glossy cover.

After final assembly, some mineral pigments were dusted onto the model’s lower areas with a soft, big brush.

  

I knew that the Defender was trouble, but esp. the legs turned out to be horrible to build. However, the small cosmetic changes really improve the model’s look, and I am quite happy with the result.

Built in 1923, this Renaissance Revival-style twenty-story skyscraper was designed by George B. Post and Sons to house the Buffalo Statler Hotel, part of the Statler Hotel chain that was headquartered in Buffalo. The second permanent hotel that the Statler family built in Buffalo, the building replaced an earlier hotel that stood on the site, housed in the former Millard Fillmore mansion, known as the Castle Inn, and an earlier flagship Statler Hotel, which was built in 1907, and located at the southeast corner of Swan Street and Washington Street in a building that was heavily influenced by the nearby Guaranty Building. Ellsworth Milton Statler, whom owned the business, had started in the hospitality industry with a restaurant in the basement of the Ellicott Square building in 1896, expanding with a 2,000-room temporary hotel at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and a 2,200 room hotel at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, which were so successful that Statler, a former bellhop, decided to re-enter the Hotel business permanently. The present building was the flagship hotel for the chain, which was based in Buffalo, but had hotels all around the United States, which featured amenities that are commonly expected today, including private bathrooms, telephones in each room, and free stationery and newspapers, and were priced at a moderate cost for more average travelers, rather than being targeted at wealthy clientele. Statler also wanted to attract the city’s elite to his establishment, and thus bought the nearby Iroquois Hotel, a longstanding center of social life for Buffalo’s elite and business class, in 1923, and closed it a day after his new hotel opened. Arguably, the original Hotel Statler was more architecturally significant, as it was one of the largest ever Art Nouveau buildings constructed in the United States, and featured a far more unique and distinctive interior and exterior, as well as being the first hotel to have all the innovative features that Statler became known for. Like the similarly significant Larkin Building, however, the original Statler Hotel Buffalo was demolished in 1968 to make way for a “shovel-ready” development site, with no regard for the non-monetary value of the building. Private development never materialized on the site, and it sat as a barren parking lot until a baseball stadium and plaza were built on the site in the late 20th Century.

 

The building features a tripartite composition, with a four-story base, which extends to the rear (east) of the tower along Genesee Street and Mohawk Street to Franklin Street, which contains many of the hotel’s major public spaces, including meeting rooms, ballrooms, lobbies, and retail spaces. Above the base rises a tower, twenty stories tall and E-shaped, with two light wells on the western side of the building that extend deep into the block to the east, with a largely unadorned red brick-clad section between the sill line of the windows on the sixth floor to the sill line of the windows on the eighteenth floor, forming the “shaft” of the composition. At the top is a more richly detailed three-story section of the building, forming the “capital” of the composition, drawing the eye upwards and emphasizing the verticality of the building. The first floor is clad in stone with rustication, with the second and third floors sharing large window bays with decorative surrounds, which include decorative keystones, broken pediments with cartouches, triple arched window openings flanked by doric pilasters and recessed niches on the western facade, paired arched windows facing Niagara Square, separated by doric pilasters, and smaller windows at the east end of the building along Franklin Street and Mohawk Street. Above the arched window bays are low-slope roofs enclosed by decorative balustrades, with smaller window openings on the fourth floor featuring decorative stone trim, with the window bays around the perimeter of the base of the tower portion of the building being flanked by doric pilasters, with an architrave with triglyphs and decorative reliefs above the pilasters, and a cornice featuring modillions running around the sill line of the fifth floor windows, marking the base of the transition from the base to the shaft. The fifth floor features windows with decorative surrounds and keystones with busts, and is topped with a cornice, which is the last strong horizontal datum before the building becomes an unadorned brick shaft for the next twelve floors. The building features double-hung and fixed windows, some of which are original, and others of which are replacements, with two-over-two windows being predominant between the sixth and eighteenth floors. On the eighteenth floor, the sill line of the windows is a line of stone belt coursing, with decorative window trim at the window openings, and a cornice with dentils above the windows, originally extending further out from the facade, but having been chiseled away due to structural issues in the late 20th Century. The nineteenth and twentieth floors feature decorative trim once again, with the outermost bays of the individual north and south facades, as well as the west facade, featuring single windows flanked by doric pilasters with decorative window trim, including busts on the keystones, and the middle bays being recessed, flanked by ionic pilasters, with copper spandrel panels. The top of the twentieth floor windows is a line of belt coursing, above which are a few courses of brick, with decorative reliefs above the doric pilasters on the east and west facades, which sits below the building’s cornice, which features brackets, and runs around the base of the brick parapet that encloses the building’s low-slope roof. Atop the parapet above the doric pilasters are decorative urns. The rear of the building also features a large circulation tower, housing the building’s main stairways and elevators, which features a largely unadorned facade with four oxeye openings with stone trim at the top, with this being the least detailed section of the building’s exterior.

 

Inside, the building features many original semi-public spaces that have been partially preserved from the original period of construction and function as a hotel. These include the “palm room”, the main lobby that is themed after a tropical garden, which sits just outside the hotel’s main dining room, a two-story space with a vaulted ceiling, decorative archways, paired arched second-story openings with balustrades and columns, arched windows above the dining room entrance, an entrance portico at the dining room with ionic columns, a decorative cornice, a broken pediment with a cartouche, and a decorative balustrade atop the portico, and a fountain surrounded by greco-roman statues. There is also the Terrace Room, which features a decorative beam ceiling, ionic columns, and a section of the ceiling that is vaulted, the golden ballroom, formerly the hotel’s main dining room, which features a cantilevered second-story balcony with ionic columns featuring capitals and accents clad in gold leaf, decorative trim and panels clad in gold leaf, a wooden parquet floor, and a vaulted ceiling, and a room in the mezzanine with well-preserved carved wood paneling and black marble fireplace surrounds. Other spaces, including the lounge, tea room, cafeteria, swimming pool, and turkish baths, have not been preserved in as intact of a condition.

 

The hotel began to see a decline in occupancy with the onset of the Great Depression, with several of its 1,100 rooms regularly sitting vacant. As a result, it began to see portions of its interior converted into office space, which accelerated after the opening of the WBEN TV studio in the building. The Statler hotel chain was bought out by Hilton in 1954, which continued to use the Statler brand on hotels that the chain had already built, but eventually phased it out. The hotel finally shuttered in 1984, with the building being renamed the Statler Towers. The building became largely vacant, with only the lower floors being occupied, with the highest occupancy being in the street-facing retail spaces. In the 2000s, the building was slated for conversion into a hotel and condominium, but this proved unsuccessful when the entity that owned the building went bankrupt, leading to a foreclosure and the building being threatened with demolition. Preservationists worked hard to save the building, leading to it being auctioned to a developer in 2010, whom started to stabilize the structure and address its deferred maintenance, reopening the event spaces on the lower floors in 2011, with plans to eventually renovate the rest of the building with an incremental, multi-phased approach. After that developer died, the building was sold to another developer, whom has announced plans to convert the base into a combination of parking, meeting and event space, amenity space, and retail space, with 600 apartments on the upper levels, with work being well underway in 2022.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 08-Jan-21.

 

First flown in Aug-00 with the Boeing test registration N1786B, it was re-registered N1015B two days later for Boeing test flights.

 

The aircraft was delivered to Hapag-Lloyd Airlines as D-AHFT in Dec-00. It was fitted with blended winglets in Apr-01. The aircraft was sold to a lessor in Dec-03 and leased back to Hapag-Lloyd.

 

Hapag-Lloyd was renamed Hapagfly.com in Nov-05 and renamed again in Nov-06 as TUIfly.com. It was wet-leased to CanJet Airlines (Canada) in Dec-08, returning to TUIfly in May-09.

 

In Nov-10 the aircraft was wet-leased to TUIfly Nordic for the winter, returning to TUIfly.com in Apr-11. TUIfly.com was renamed TUI Airlines Germany at the end of Oct-17. The aircraft was withdrawn from service and stored at Hanover, Germany in Mar-20 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

 

It returned to service in early Jul-20. The aircraft was withdrawn from service in Nov-21 and parked at Hannover, Germany. It was ferried to Roswell, NM, USA in Dec-21, returned to the lessor as EI-GYO and stored.

 

The aircraft was ferried to Vilnius, Lithuania in Jul-22 for further storage. In Apr-23 it was leased to Go2Sky Airlines (Slovak Republic) as OM-GTJ and wet-leased to TUI Airlines Germany three days later.

 

At various times during the 2023 summer season it also operated for TUI Nordic, TUI Netherlands, TUI Belgium and TUI UK, returning to Go2Sky in Sep-23. During the 2023/24 winter season the aircraft was wet-leased to JetTime (Denmark), TUI Germany, Seven Air (Denmark) and Air Explore (Czechia).

 

In Apr-24 the aircraft was leased to TUI Airways UK for the 2024 summer season. Current, updated 11-Aug-24.