View allAll Photos Tagged visually
Visually they looked damp, so the Macro photography was a delight in discovering the almost furry top surface, seen at the edges of these fungi.
These ranged in size up to 15mm diameter.
Visually Impaired - Color Blind
Using LomoChrome film to raise awareness of the visually impaired. RZ67 - turquoise
A visually-impared individual and his guide while waiting for a bus along EDSA during the recently concluded APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting held in Manila.
Visually dominated by a type of infrastructure that was installed over the Blue Mountains primarily for an expected upsurge in coal traffic in the 1950s, three AC-traction 93 class power over a short rise at Werrington with a long rake of empty coal wagons the like of which in terms of train length and tonnage capacity were unthinkable at the time of Western line electrification six decades ago this year (2017).
080356 9 Aug 2017
Visually, there's not much I can think of to say about this. If you want, you could read about it, though. And then you could say, "Ah, so that is what a super-metal-rich planetary nebula looks like."
Again, two sets of data were three years apart, so if you are a very keen observer you may notice slight color fringing.
Red: hst_08594_03_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci + hst_06119_94_wfpc2_f814w_pc_sci
Green: hst_06119_94_wfpc2_f555w_pc_02_sci
Blue: hst_08594_03_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is NOT up.
There are three Ashfords, really. The modern newtown, Swindonesque newbuilds stretching into the countryside; the Victorian railway town, all neat rows of brick buit houses and the station, and then there is the old town, timber-framed houses along narrow lanes, with St Mary standing towering above all but the modern office blocks.
The west end church was given over to a Christmas Fayre, but is also used now as a concert venue, while under the tower westwards is still in use as a church, with many of its ancient features left alone by the Victorians.
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A stately church in a good position set away from the hustle and bustle of this cosmopolitan town. The very narrow tower of 1475 is not visually satisfactory when viewed from a distance but its odd proportions are hardly noticed when standing at its base. The church is very much the product of the families who have been associated with it over the centuries and who are commemorated by monuments within. They include the Fogges and the Smythes. The former is supposed to have wanted to create a college of priests here, but by the late fifteenth century such foundations were going out of fashion and the remodelling of the church undertaken by Sir John Fogge may have just been a philanthropic cause. Unusually, when the church was restored in 1860 the architect Ewan Christian kept the galleries (he usually swept them away), but Christ Church had yet to be built and the population of this growing town would have needed all the accommodation it could get. Even in 1851 1000 people had attended the church in a single sitting. The pulpit, designed by Pearson, was made in 1897.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Ashford+1
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THE TOWN AND PARISH OF ASHFORD
LIES the next adjoining to Hothfield eastward. It is called in Domesday both Estefort and Essetesford, and in other antient records, Eshetisford, taking its name from the river, which runs close to it, which, Lambarde says, ought not to be called the Stour, till it has passed this town, but Eshe or Eschet, a name which has been for a great length of time wholly forgotten; this river being known, even from its first rise at Lenham hither, by the name of the Stour only.
A small part only of this parish, on the east, south and west sides of it, containing the borough of Henwood, alias Hewit, lying on the eastern or further side of the river from the town, part of which extends into the parish of Wilsborough, and the whole of it within the liberty of the manor of Wye, and the borough of Rudlow, which adjoins to Kingsnoth and Great Chart, are in this hundred of Chart and Longbridge; such part of the borough of Rudlow as lies adjoining to Kingsnoth, is said to lie in in jugo de Beavor, or the yoke of Beavor, and is divided from the town and liberty by the river, near a place called Pollbay; in which yoke there is both a hamlet and a green or common, of the name of Beavor; the remainder of the parish having been long separated from it, and made a distinct liberty, or jurisdiction of itself, having a constable of its own, and distinguished by the name of the liberty of the town of Ashford.
ASHFORD, at the time of taking the general survey of Domesday, was part of the possessions of Hugo de Montfort, who had accompanied the Conqueror hither, and was afterwards rewarded with this estate, among many others in different counties; in which record it is thus entered, under the general title of his lands:
¶Maigno holds of Hugo (de Montfort) Estefort. Turgisus held it of earl Godwin, and it is taxed at one suling. The arable land is half a carucate. There is nevertheless in demesne one carucate, and two villeins having one carucate. There are two servants, and eight acres of meadow. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, it was worth twenty five shillings; when he received it, twenty shillings; now thirty shilling.
The same Hugo holds Essela. Three tenants held it of king Edward, and could go whither they would with their lands. It was taxed at three yokes. The arable land is one carucate and an half. There are now four villeins, with two borderers having one carucate, and six acres of meadow. The whole, in the reign of king Edward the Confessor, was worth twenty shillings, and afterwards fifteen shillings, now twenty shillings.
Maigno held another Essetisford of the same Hugo. Wirelm held it of king Edward. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is four carucates. In demesne there are two, and two villeins, with fifteen borderers having three carucates. There is a church, and a priest, and three servants, and two mills of ten shillings and two pence. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth seventy shillings, and afterwards sixty shillings, now one hundred shillings.
Robert de Montfort, grandson of Hugh abovementioned, favouring the title of Robert Curthose, in opposition to king Henry I. to avoid being called in question upon that account, obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, leaving his possessions to the king; by which means this manor came into the hands of the crown. Soon after which it seems to have come into the possession of a family, who took their name from it. William de Asshetesford appears by the register of Horton priory to have been lord of it, and to have been succeeded by another of the same name. After which the family of Criol became owners of it, by whom it was held by knight's service of the king, in capite, by ward to Dover castle, and the repair of a tower in that castle, called the Ashford tower. (fn. 1) Simon de Criol, in the 27th and 28th year of Henry III. obtained a charter of free warren for this manor, whose son William de Criol passed it away to Roger de Leyborne, for Stocton, in Huntingdonshire, and Rumford, in Essex. William de Leyborne his son, in the 7th year of king Edward I. claimed and was allowed the privilege of a market here, before the justices itinerant. He died possessed of this manor in the 3d year of Edward II. leaving his grand-daughter Juliana, daughter of Thomas de Leyborne, who died in his father's life-time, heir both to her grandfather and father's possessions, from the greatness of which she was stiled the Infanta of Kent, (fn. 2) though thrice married, yet she died s. p. by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of Edward III. Upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, and continued there till king Richard II. vested it, among others, in feoffees, for the performance of certain religious bequests by the will of king Edward III. then lately deceased; and they, in compliance with it, soon afterwards, with the king's licence, purchased this manor, with those of Wall, and Esture, of the crown, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in the king's palace of Westminster, all which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 7th year, granted to them a fair in this town yearly, on the feast of St. John Port Latin, together with all liberties, and to have a steward to hold the court of it, &c. In which situation they continued till the 1st year of Edward VI. when this collegiate chapel was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where these manors did not continue long; for that king, in his 3d year, granted the manor of Esshetford, with that of Wall, and the manor of Esture, to Sir Anthony Aucher, of Otterden, to hold in capite; and he, in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, sold them to Sir Andrew Judde, of London, whose daughter and at length heir Alice, afterwards carried them in marriage to Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, commonly called the Customer, who died possessed of them in 1591, and lies buried in the south cross of this church, having had several sons and daughters, of, whom Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, the eldest, succeeded him here, and was sheriff anno 42 Elizabeth. Sir Thomas Smith, the second son, was of Bidborough and Sutton at Hone, and ambassador to Russia, of whom and his descendants, notice has been taken in the former volumes of this history; (fn. 3) and Henry, the third son, was of Corsham, in Wiltshire, whence this family originally descended, and Sir Richard Smith, the fourth, was of Leeds castle. Sir John Smythe, above-mentioned, died in 1609, and lies buried in the same vault as his father in this church, leaving one son Sir Thomas Smythe, of Westenhanger, K. B. who was in 1628 created Viscount Strangford, of Ireland, whose grandson Philip, viscount Strangford, dying about 1709, Henry Roper, lord Teynham, who had married Catherine his eldest daughter, by his will, became possessed of the manors of Ashford, Wall, and Esture. By her, who died in 1711, he had two sons, Philip and Henry, successively lords Teynham; notwithstanding which, having the uncontrolled power in these manors vested in him, he, on his marriage with Anne, second daughter and coheir of Thomas Lennard, earl of Sussex, and widow of Richard Barrett Lennard, esq. afterwards baroness Dacre, settled them on her and her issue by him in tail male. He died in 1623, and left her surviving, and possessed of these manors for her life. She afterwards married the hon. Robert Moore, and died in 1755. She had by lord Teynham two sons, Charles and Richard-Henry, (fn. 4) Charles Roper, the eldest son, died in 1754 intestate, leaving two sons, Trevor-Charles and Henry, who on their mother's death became entitled to these manors, as coheirs in gavelkind, a recovery having been suffered of them, limiting them after her death to Charles Roper their father, in tail male; but being infants, and there being many incumbrances on these estates, a bill was exhibited in chancery, and an act procured anno 29 George II. for the sale of them; and accordingly these manors were sold, under the direction of that court, in 1765, to the Rev. Francis Hender Foote, of Bishopsborne, who in 1768 parted with the manor of Wall, alias Court at Wall, to John Toke, esq. of Great Chart, whose son Nicholas Roundell Toke, is the present possessor of it; but he died possessed of the manors of Ashford and Esture in 1773, and was succeeded in them by his eldest son John Foote, esq. now of Bishopsborne, the present owner of them. There are several copyhold lands held of the manor of Ashford. A court leet and court baron is regularly held for it.
THE TOWN OF ASHFORD stands most pleasant and healthy, on the knoll of a hill, of a gentle ascent on every side, the high road from Hythe to Maidstone passing through it, from which, in the middle of the town, the high road branches off through a pleasant country towards Canterbury. The houses are mostly modern and well-built, and the high-street, which has been lately new paved, is of considerable width. The markethouse stands in the centre of it, and the church and school on the south side of it, the beautiful tower of the former being a conspicuous object to the adjoining country. It is a small, but neat and chearful town, and many of the inhabitants of a genteel rank in life. Near the market place, is the house of the late Dr. Isaac Rutton, a physician of long and extensive practice in these parts, being the eldest son of Matthias Rutton, gent of this town, by Sarah his wife, daughter of Sir N. Toke, of Godinton. He died in 1792, bearing for his arms, Parted per fess, azure, and or, three unicorns heads, couped at the neck, counterchanged; since which, his eldest son, Isaac Rutton, esq. now of Ospringeplace, has sold this house to Mr. John Basil Duckworth, in whom it is now vested. In the midst of it is a large handsome house, built in 1759, by John Mascall, gent. who resided in it, and died possessed of it in 1769, and was buried in Boughton Aluph church, bearing for his arms, Barry of two, or, and azure, three inescutcheons, ermine; and his only son, Robert Mascall, esq. now of Ashford, who married the daughter of Jeremiah Curteis, esq. is the present owner, and resides in it. At the east end of the town is a seat, called Brooke-place, formerly possessed by the family of Woodward, who were always stiled, in antient deeds, gentlemen, and bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, sable, between three grasshoppers, or; the last of them, Mr. John Woodward, gent. rebuilt this seat, and died possessed of it in 1757; of whose heirs it was purchased by Martha, widow of Moyle Breton, esq. of Kennington, whose two sons, the Rev. Moyle Breton, and Mr. Whitfield Breton, gent. alienated it to Josias Pattenson, esq. the second son of Mr. Josias Pattenson, of Biddenden, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Felix Kadwell, esq. of Rolvenden; he married Mary, daughter of Mr. Henry Dering, gent. of this parish, and widow of Mr. John Mascall above-mentioned, by whom he has no issue, and he is the present owner of this seat, and resides in it. There have been barracks erected lately here, which at present contain 4000 soldiers. The market is held on a Saturday weekly, for the sale of corn, which is now but little used; and a market for the sale of all sorts of fat and lean stock on the first and third Tuesday in every month, which has been of great use to prevent monopolies. Two fairs are annually held now, by the alteration of the stile, on May 17, and Sept. 9, and another on Oct. 24; besides which, there is an annual fair for wool on August 2, not many years since instituted and encouraged by the principal gentry and landholders, which promises to prove of the greatest utility and benefit to the fair sale of it. That branch of the river Stour which rises at Lenham, runs along the southern part of this parish, and having turned a corn mill belonging to the lord of this manor, continues its course close at the east end of the town, where there is a stone bridge of four arches, repaired at the expence of the county, and so on northwards towards Wye and Canterbury. On the south side of the river in this parish, next to Kingsnoth, within the borough of Rudlow, is the yoke of Beavor, with the hamlet and farm of that name, possessed in very early times, as appears by the register of Horton priory, by a family of that name, one of whom, John Beavor, was possessed of it in the reign of Henry II. and was descended from one of the same furname, who attended the Conqueror in his expedition hither. The parish contains about 2000 acres of land, and three hundred and twenty houses, the whole rental of it being 4000l. per annum; the inhabitants are 2000, of which about one hundred are diffenters. The highways throughout it, which not many years ago were exceeding bad, have been by the unanimity of the inhabitants, which has shewn itself remarkable in all their public improvements, a rare instance in parochial undertakings, and by the great attention to the repairs of them, especially in such parts as were near their own houses, are now excellent. The lands round it are much upon a gravelly soil, though towards the east and south there are some rich fertile pastures, intermixed with arable land, and several plantations of hops; but toward the west, the soil is in general sand, having much quarrystone mixed with it, where there is a great deal of coppice wood, quite to Potter's corner, at the boundary of this parish.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a large handsome building, consisting of three isles, with a transept, and three chancels, with the tower in the middle, which is losty and well proportioned, having four pinnacles at the top of it. There are eight bells in it, a set of chimes, and a clock. In the high chancel, on the north side, is the college John Fogge, the founder of the college here, who died in 1490, and his two wives, the brasses of their figures gone; but part of the inscription remains. And formerly, in Weever's time, there hung up in this chancel six atchievements, of those of this family whose burials had been attended by the heralds at arms, and with other ceremonies suitable to their degrees. Underneath the chancel is a large vault, full of the remains of the family. On the pavement in the middle, is a very antient curious gravestone, having on it the figure in brass of a woman, holding in her left hand a banner, with the arms of Ferrers, Six masctes, three and three, in pale; which, with a small part of the inscription round the edge, is all that is remaining; but there was formerly in brass, in her right hand, another banner, with the arms of Valoyns; over her head those of France and England quarterly; and under her feet a shield, being a cross, impaling three chevronels, the whole within a bordure, guttee de sang, and round the edge this inscription, Ici gift Elizabeth Comite D' athels la file sign de Ferrers . . . dieu asoil, qe morust le 22 jour d'octob. can de grace MCCCLXXV. Weever says, she was wife to David de Strabolgie, the fourth of that name, earl of Athol, in Scotland, and daughter of Henry, lord Ferrers, of Groby; and being secondly married to John Malmayns, of this county, died here in this town. Though by a pedigree of the family of Brograve, she is said to marry T. Fogge, esq. of Ashford; if so, he might perhaps have been her third husband. Near her is a memorial for William Whitfield, gent. obt. 1739. The north chancel belonged to Repton manor. In the vault underneath lay three of the family of Tuston, sometime since removed to Rainham, and it has been granted to the Husseys; Thomas Hussey, esq. of this town, died in 1779, and was buried in it. In the south chancel are memorials for the Pattensons, Whitfields, and Apsleys, of this place; and one for Henry Dering, gent. of Shelve, obt. 1752, and Hester his wife; arms, A saltier, a crescent for difference, impaling, on a chevron, between three persons, three crosses, formee; and another memorial for Thomasine, wife of John Handfield, obt. 1704. In the north cross are several antient stones, their brasses all gone, excepting a shield, with the arms of Fogge on one. At the end is a monument for John Norwood, gent. and Mary his wife, of this town, who lie with their children in the vault underneath. The south cross is parted off lengthways, for the family of Smith, lords of Ashford manor, who lie in a vault underneath. In it are three superb monuments, which, not many years since, were beautified and restored to their original state, by the late chief baron Smythe, a descendant of this family. One is for Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, in 1591; the second for Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, his son, and Elizabeth his wife; and the third for Sir Richard Smyth, of Leeds castle, in 1628: all which have been already mentioned before. Their figures, at full length and proportion, are lying on, each of them, with their several coats of arms and quarterings blazoned. In the other part of this cross, is a memorial for Baptist Pigott, A. M. son of Baptist Pigott, of Dartford, and schoolmaster here, obt. 1657, and at the end of it, is the archbishop's consistory court. In the south isle is a memorial for Thomas Curteis, gent. obt. 1718, and Elizabeth his wife; arms, Curteis impaling Carter. Under the tower is one for Samuel Warren, vicar here forty-eight years, obt. 1720. The three isles were new pewed and handsomely paved in 1745. There are five galleries, and an handsome branch for candles in the middled isle; the whole kept in an excellent state of repair and neatness. There was formerly much curtious painted glass in the windows, particularly the figures of one of the family of Valoyns, his two wives and children, with their arms. In the south window of the cross isle, and in other windows, the figures, kneeling, of king Edward III. the black prince, Richard, duke of Gloucester, the lord Hastings. Sir William Haute, the lord Scales, Richard, earl Rivers, and the dutchess of Bedford his wife, Sir John Fogge, Sir John Peche, Richard Horne, Roger Manstone, and—Guildford, most of which were in the great west window, each habited in their surcoats of arms, not the least traces of which, or of any other coloured glass, are remaining throughout this church. Sir John Goldstone, parson of Ivechurch, as appears by his will in 1503, was buried in the choir of this church, and gave several costly ornaments and vestments for the use of it.
Visually, NGC 6891 seems fairly simple. I can only see some very small knots of H-alpha. One of them is easy to spot. It's a very small, red dot near the left edge of the outer halo of material. I almost cleaned it up, thinking it was a cosmic ray.
Red: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is NOT up.
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.
The rather visually challenged Greenwood Corvette was I believe made by the same named company who specialise in automotive performance tuning and racing specifically for....Corvettes! ;-p
Hot Wheels, ever eager to sniff out every last Corvette variation first released this casting a few years back and proved very popular with U.S. collectors. Its back yet again for 2020 and can be seen here in its very latest Case G colour scheme. Found recently at B&M Bargains. Mint and boxed.
Visually, the finished look is one of pure line with few design elements. The atmosphere is one of pure tranquillity during the day; the reflection of sky in the water and very little to distract the eye. At night the lighting scheme creates a magical pathway fading into the distance, and always there is the gentle sound of running water.
Part of a larger scheme, these clients wanted an ultra-simple, minimalist waterfeature on two levels. The main material used was a pale cream Travertine detailed with a dark slate-grey.
At the lower level, a canal runs across the garden. The main steps are accessed by stepping stones across the water.
The upper level features two rills. Water flows away from the house and cascades via two stainless steel waterfalls onto the lower level beyond, aerating and purifying. The paving features LED flush lighting to highlight the edge of the scheme and the steps and all three bodies of water are floodlit discreetly below the water surface.
The only plant material is six ball-shaped box trees, providing a simple, sculptural look to this otherwise angular scheme.
+++ 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 OV-10 Bronco was initially conceived in the early 1960s through an informal collaboration between W. H. Beckett and Colonel K. P. Rice, U.S. Marine Corps, who met at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, and who also happened to live near each other. The original concept was for a rugged, simple, close air support aircraft integrated with forward ground operations. At the time, the U.S. Army was still experimenting with armed helicopters, and the U.S. Air Force was not interested in close air support.
The concept aircraft was to operate from expedient forward air bases using roads as runways. Speed was to be from very slow to medium subsonic, with much longer loiter times than a pure jet. Efficient turboprop engines would give better performance than piston engines. Weapons were to be mounted on the centerline to get efficient aiming. The inventors favored strafing weapons such as self-loading recoilless rifles, which could deliver aimed explosive shells with less recoil than cannons, and a lower per-round weight than rockets. The airframe was to be designed to avoid the back blast.
Beckett and Rice developed a basic platform meeting these requirements, then attempted to build a fiberglass prototype in a garage. The effort produced enthusiastic supporters and an informal pamphlet describing the concept. W. H. Beckett, who had retired from the Marine Corps, went to work at North American Aviation to sell the aircraft.
The aircraft's design supported effective operations from forward bases. The OV-10 had a central nacelle containing a crew of two in tandem and space for cargo, and twin booms containing twin turboprop engines. The visually distinctive feature of the aircraft is the combination of the twin booms, with the horizontal stabilizer that connected them at the fin tips. The OV-10 could perform short takeoffs and landings, including on aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious assault ships without using catapults or arresting wires. Further, the OV-10 was designed to take off and land on unimproved sites. Repairs could be made with ordinary tools. No ground equipment was required to start the engines. And, if necessary, the engines would operate on high-octane automobile fuel with only a slight loss of power.
The aircraft had responsive handling and could fly for up to 5½ hours with external fuel tanks. The cockpit had extremely good visibility for both pilot and co-pilot, provided by a wrap-around "greenhouse" that was wider than the fuselage. North American Rockwell custom ejection seats were standard, with many successful ejections during service. With the second seat removed, the OV-10 could carry 3,200 pounds (1,500 kg) of cargo, five paratroopers, or two litter patients and an attendant. Empty weight was 6,969 pounds (3,161 kg). Normal operating fueled weight with two crew was 9,908 pounds (4,494 kg). Maximum takeoff weight was 14,446 pounds (6,553 kg).
The bottom of the fuselage bore sponsons or "stub wings" that improved flight performance by decreasing aerodynamic drag underneath the fuselage. Normally, four 7.62 mm (.308 in) M60C machine guns were carried on the sponsons, accessed through large forward-opening hatches. The sponsons also had four racks to carry bombs, pods, or fuel. The wings outboard of the engines contained two additional hardpoints, one per side. Racked armament in the Vietnam War was usually seven-shot 2.75 in (70 mm) rocket pods with white phosphorus marker rounds or high-explosive rockets, or 5" (127 mm) four-shot Zuni rocket pods. Bombs, ADSIDS air-delivered/para-dropped unattended seismic sensors, Mk-6 battlefield illumination flares, and other stores were also carried.
Operational experience showed some weaknesses in the OV-10's design. It was significantly underpowered, which contributed to crashes in Vietnam in sloping terrain because the pilots could not climb fast enough. While specifications stated that the aircraft could reach 26,000 feet (7,900 m), in Vietnam the aircraft could reach only 18,000 feet (5,500 m). Also, no OV-10 pilot survived ditching the aircraft.
The OV-10 served in the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Navy, as well as in the service of a number of other countries. In U.S. military service, the Bronco was operated until the early Nineties, and obsoleted USAF OV-10s were passed on to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for anti-drug operations. A number of OV-10As furthermore ended up in the hands of the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and were used for spotting fires and directing fire bombers onto hot spots.
This was not the end of the OV-10 in American military service, though: In 2012, the type gained new attention because of its unique qualities. A $20 million budget was allocated to activate an experimental USAF unit of two airworthy OV-10Gs, acquired from NASA and the State Department. These machines were retrofitted with military equipment and were, starting in May 2015, deployed overseas to support Operation “Inherent Resolve”, flying more than 120 combat sorties over 82 days over Iraq and Syria. Their concrete missions remained unclear, and it is speculated they provided close air support for Special Forces missions, esp. in confined urban environments where the Broncos’ loitering time and high agility at low speed and altitude made them highly effective and less vulnerable than helicopters.
Furthermore, these Broncos reputedly performed strikes with the experimental AGR-20A “Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS)”, a Hydra 70-millimeter rocket with a laser-seeking head as guidance - developed for precision strikes against small urban targets with little collateral damage. The experiment ended satisfactorily, but the machines were retired again, and the small unit was dissolved.
However, the machines had shown their worth in asymmetric warfare, and the U.S. Air Force decided to invest in reactivating the OV-10 on a regular basis, despite the overhead cost of operating an additional aircraft type in relatively small numbers – but development and production of a similar new type would have caused much higher costs, with an uncertain time until an operational aircraft would be ready for service. Re-activating a proven design and updating an existing airframe appeared more efficient.
The result became the MV-10H, suitably christened “Super Bronco” but also known as “Black Pony”, after the program's internal name. This aircraft was derived from the official OV-10X proposal by Boeing from 2009 for the USAF's Light Attack/Armed Reconnaissance requirement. Initially, Boeing proposed to re-start OV-10 manufacture, but this was deemed uneconomical, due to the expected small production number of new serial aircraft, so the “Black Pony” program became a modernization project. In consequence, all airframes for the "new" MV-10Hs were recovered OV-10s of various types from the "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.
While the revamped aircraft would maintain much of its 1960s-vintage rugged external design, modernizations included a completely new, armored central fuselage with a highly modified cockpit section, ejection seats and a computerized glass cockpit. The “Black Pony” OV-10 had full dual controls, so that either crewmen could steer the aircraft while the other operated sensors and/or weapons. This feature would also improve survivability in case of incapacitation of a crew member as the result from a hit.
The cockpit armor protected the crew and many vital systems from 23mm shells and shrapnel (e. g. from MANPADS). The crew still sat in tandem under a common, generously glazed canopy with flat, bulletproof panels for reduced sun reflections, with the pilot in the front seat and an observer/WSO behind. The Bronco’s original cargo capacity and the rear door were retained, even though the extra armor and defensive measures like chaff/flare dispensers as well as an additional fuel cell in the central fuselage limited the capacity. However, it was still possible to carry and deploy personnel, e. g. small special ops teams of up to four when the aircraft flew in clean configuration.
Additional updates for the MV-10H included structural reinforcements for a higher AUW and higher g load maneuvers, similar to OV-10D+ standards. The landing gear was also reinforced, and the aircraft kept its ability to operate from short, improvised airstrips. A fixed refueling probe was added to improve range and loiter time.
Intelligence sensors and smart weapon capabilities included a FLIR sensor and a laser range finder/target designator, both mounted in a small turret on the aircraft’s nose. The MV-10H was also outfitted with a data link and the ability to carry an integrated targeting pod such as the Northrop Grumman LITENING or the Lockheed Martin Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP). Also included was the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER) to provide live sensor data and video recordings to personnel on the ground.
To improve overall performance and to better cope with the higher empty weight of the modified aircraft as well as with operations under hot-and-high conditions, the engines were beefed up. The new General Electric CT7-9D turboprop engines improved the Bronco's performance considerably: top speed increased by 100 mph (160 km/h), the climb rate was tripled (a weak point of early OV-10s despite the type’s good STOL capability) and both take-off as well as landing run were almost halved. The new engines called for longer nacelles, and their circular diameter markedly differed from the former Garrett T76-G-420/421 turboprop engines. To better exploit the additional power and reduce the aircraft’s audio signature, reversible contraprops, each with eight fiberglass blades, were fitted. These allowed a reduced number of revolutions per minute, resulting in less noise from the blades and their tips, while the engine responsiveness was greatly improved. The CT7-9Ds’ exhausts were fitted with muzzlers/air mixers to further reduce the aircraft's noise and heat signature.
Another novel and striking feature was the addition of so-called “tip sails” to the wings: each wingtip was elongated with a small, cigar-shaped fairing, each carrying three staggered, small “feather blade” winglets. Reputedly, this installation contributed ~10% to the higher climb rate and improved lift/drag ratio by ~6%, improving range and loiter time, too.
Drawing from the Iraq experience as well as from the USMC’s NOGS test program with a converted OV-10D as a night/all-weather gunship/reconnaissance platform, the MV-10H received a heavier gun armament: the original four light machine guns that were only good for strafing unarmored targets were deleted and their space in the sponsons replaced by avionics. Instead, the aircraft was outfitted with a lightweight M197 three-barrel 20mm gatling gun in a chin turret. This could be fixed in a forward position at high speed or when carrying forward-firing ordnance under the stub wings, or it could be deployed to cover a wide field of fire under the aircraft when it was flying slower, being either slaved to the FLIR or to a helmet sighting auto targeting system.
The original seven hardpoints were retained (1x ventral, 2x under each sponson, and another pair under the outer wings), but the total ordnance load was slightly increased and an additional pair of launch rails for AIM-9 Sidewinders or other light AAMs under the wing tips were added – not only as a defensive measure, but also with an anti-helicopter role in mind; four more Sidewinders could be carried on twin launchers under the outer wings against aerial targets. Other guided weapons cleared for the MV-10H were the light laser-guided AGR-20A and AGM-119 Hellfire missiles, the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System upgrade to the light Hydra 70 rockets, the new Laser Guided Zuni Rocket which had been cleared for service in 2010, TV-/IR-/laser-guided AGM-65 Maverick AGMs and AGM-122 Sidearm anti-radar missiles, plus a wide range of gun and missile pods, iron and cluster bombs, as well as ECM and flare/chaff pods, which were not only carried defensively, but also in order to disrupt enemy ground communication.
In this configuration, a contract for the conversion of twelve mothballed American Broncos to the new MV-10H standard was signed with Boeing in 2016, and the first MV-10H was handed over to the USAF in early 2018, with further deliveries lasting into early 2020. All machines were allocated to the newly founded 919th Special Operations Support Squadron at Duke Field (Florida). This unit was part of the 919th Special Operations Wing, an Air Reserve Component (ARC) of the United States Air Force. It was assigned to the Tenth Air Force of Air Force Reserve Command and an associate unit of the 1st Special Operations Wing, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). If mobilized the wing was gained by AFSOC (Air Force Special Operations Command) to support Special Tactics, the U.S. Air Force's special operations ground force. Similar in ability and employment to Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC), U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Tactics personnel were typically the first to enter combat and often found themselves deep behind enemy lines in demanding, austere conditions, usually with little or no support.
The MV-10Hs are expected to provide support for these ground units in the form of all-weather reconnaissance and observation, close air support and also forward air control duties for supporting ground units. Precision ground strikes and protection from enemy helicopters and low-flying aircraft were other, secondary missions for the modernized Broncos, which are expected to serve well into the 2040s. Exports or conversions of foreign OV-10s to the Black Pony standard are not planned, though.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 42 ft 2½ in (12,88 m) incl. pitot
Wingspan: 45 ft 10½ in(14 m) incl. tip sails
Height: 15 ft 2 in (4.62 m)
Wing area: 290.95 sq ft (27.03 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 64A315
Empty weight: 9,090 lb (4,127 kg)
Gross weight: 13,068 lb (5,931 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 17,318 lb (7,862 kg)
Powerplant:
2× General Electric CT7-9D turboprop engines, 1,305 kW (1,750 hp) each,
driving 8-bladed Hamilton Standard 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) diameter constant-speed,
fully feathering, reversible contra-rotating propellers with metal hub and composite blades
Performance:
Maximum speed: 390 mph (340 kn, 625 km/h)
Combat range: 198 nmi (228 mi, 367 km)
Ferry range: 1,200 nmi (1,400 mi, 2,200 km) with auxiliary fuel
Maximum loiter time: 5.5 h with auxiliary fuel
Service ceiling: 32.750 ft (10,000 m)
13,500 ft (4.210 m) on one engine
Rate of climb: 17.400 ft/min (48 m/s) at sea level
Take-off run: 480 ft (150 m)
740 ft (227 m) to 50 ft (15 m)
1,870 ft (570 m) to 50 ft (15 m) at MTOW
Landing run: 490 ft (150 m)
785 ft (240 m) at MTOW
1,015 ft (310 m) from 50 ft (15 m)
Armament:
1x M197 3-barreled 20 mm Gatling cannon in a chin turret with 750 rounds ammo capacity
7x hardpoints for a total load of 5.000 lb (2,270 kg)
2x wingtip launch rails for AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs
The kit and its assembly:
This fictional Bronco update/conversion was simply spawned by the idea: could it be possible to replace the original cockpit section with one from an AH-1 Cobra, for a kind of gunship version?
The basis is the Academy OV-10D kit, mated with the cockpit section from a Fujimi AH-1S TOW Cobra (Revell re-boxing, though), chosen because of its “boxy” cockpit section with flat glass panels – I think that it conveys the idea of an armored cockpit section best. Combining these parts was not easy, though, even though the plan sound simple. Initially, the Bronco’s twin booms, wings and stabilizer were built separately, because this made PSR on these sections easier than trying the same on a completed airframe. One of the initial challenges: the different engines. I wanted something uprated, and a different look, and I had a pair of (excellent!) 1:144 resin engines from the Russian company Kompakt Zip for a Tu-95 bomber at hand, which come together with movable(!) eight-blade contraprops that were an almost perfect size match for the original three-blade props. Biggest problem: the Tu-95 nacelles have a perfectly circular diameter, while the OV-10’s booms are square and rectangular. Combining these parts and shapes was already a messy PST affair, but it worked out quite well – even though the result rather reminds of some Chinese upgrade measure (anyone know the Tu-4 copies with turboprops? This here looks similar!). But while not pretty, I think that the beafier look works well and adds to the idea of a “revived” aircraft. And you can hardly beat the menacing look of contraprops on anything...
The exotic, so-called “tip sails” on the wings, mounted on short booms, are a detail borrowed from the Shijiazhuang Y-5B-100, an updated Chinese variant/copy of the Antonov An-2 biplane transporter. The booms are simple pieces of sprue from the Bronco kit, the winglets were cut from 0.5mm styrene sheet.
For the cockpit donor, the AH-1’s front section was roughly built, including the engine section (which is a separate module, so that the basic kit can be sold with different engine sections), and then the helicopter hull was cut and trimmed down to match the original Bronco pod and to fit under the wing. This became more complicated than expected, because a) the AH-1 cockpit and the nose are considerably shorter than the OV-10s, b) the AH-1 fuselage is markedly taller than the Bronco’s and c) the engine section, which would end up in the area of the wing, features major recesses, making the surface very uneven – calling for massive PSR to even this out. PSR was also necessary to hide the openings for the Fujimi AH-1’s stub wings. Other issues: the front landing gear (and its well) had to be added, as well as the OV-10 wing stubs. Furthermore, the new cockpit pod’s rear section needed an aerodynamical end/fairing, but I found a leftover Academy OV-10 section from a build/kitbashing many moons ago. Perfect match!
All these challenges could be tackled, even though the AH-1 cockpit looks surprisingly stout and massive on the Bronco’s airframe - the result looks stockier than expected, but it works well for the "Gunship" theme. Lots of PSR went into the new central fuselage section, though, even before it was mated with the OV-10 wing and the rest of the model.
Once cockpit and wing were finally mated, the seams had to disappear under even more PSR and a spinal extension of the canopy had to be sculpted across the upper wing surface, which would meld with the pod’s tail in a (more or less) harmonious shape. Not an easy task, and the fairing was eventually sculpted with 2C putty, plus even more PSR… Looks quite homogenous, though.
After this massive body work, other hardware challenges appeared like small distractions. The landing gear was another major issue because the deeper AH-1 section lowered the ground clearance, also because of the chin turret. To counter this, I raised the OV-10’s main landing gear by ~2mm – not much, but it was enough to create a credible stance, together with the front landing gear transplant under the cockpit, which received an internal console to match the main landing gear’s length. Due to the chin turret and the shorter nose, the front wheel retracts backwards now. But this looks quite plausible, thanks to the additional space under the cockpit tub, which also made a belt feed for the gun’s ammunition supply believable.
To enhance the menacing look I gave the model a fixed refueling boom, made from 1mm steel wire and a receptor adapter sculpted with white glue. The latter stuff was also used add some antenna fairings around the hull. Some antennae, chaff dispensers and an IR decoy were taken from the Academy kit.
The ordnance came from various sources. The Sidewinders under the wing tips were taken from an Italeri F-16C/D kit, they look better than the missiles from the Academy Bronco kit. Their launch rails came from an Italeri Bae Hawk 200. The quadruple Hellfire launchers on the underwing hardpoints were left over from an Italeri AH-1W, and they are a perfect load for this aircraft and its role. The LAU-10 and -19 missile pods on the stub wings were taken from the OV-10 kit.
Painting and markings:
Finding a suitable and somewhat interesting – but still plausible – paint scheme was not easy. Taking the A-10 as benchmark, an overall light grey livery (with focus on low contrast against the sky as protection against ground fire) would have been a likely choice – and in fact the last operational American OV-10s were painted in this fashion. But in order to provide a different look I used the contemporary USAF V-22Bs and Special Operations MC-130s as benchmark, which typically carry a darker paint scheme consisting of FS 36118 (suitably “Gunship Gray” :D) from above, FS 36375 underneath, with a low, wavy waterline, plus low-viz markings. Not spectacular, but plausible – and very similar to the late r/w Colombian OV-10s.
The cockpit tub became Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Humbrol 140) and the landing gear white (Revell 301).
The model received an overall black ink washing and some post-panel-shading, to liven up the dull all-grey livery. The decals were gathered from various sources, and I settled for black USAF low-viz markings. The “stars and bars” come from a late USAF F-4, the “IP” tail code was tailored from F-16 markings and the shark mouth was taken from an Academy AH-64. Most stencils came from another Academy OV-10 sheet and some other sources.
Decals were also used to create the trim on the propeller blades and markings on the ordnance.
Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri) and some exhaust soot stains were added with graphite along the tail boom flanks.
A successful transplantation – but is this still a modified Bronco or already a kitbashing? The result looks quite plausible and menacing, even though the TOW Cobra front section appears relatively massive. But thanks to the bigger engines and extended wing tips the proportions still work. The large low-pressure tires look a bit goofy under the aircraft, but they are original. The grey livery works IMHO well, too – a more colorful or garish scheme would certainly have distracted from the modified technical basis.
Dig the mod op art outfits on these gals! The girls on the left and right are laughing and mocking the girl in the middle wearing the boring white outfit.
what the thing does (image returned by word search) | a drawing of a thing | visually similar (image returned by image search)
Scripps College is perhaps the most visually pleasing of The Claremont Colleges and I often go there to just enjoy the setting. Hidden are a couple of courtyards, and this is one of them. Scripps is a small women's college with a student body of roughly 900 or so. The students can share classes with other colleges at The Claremont Colleges. The school has a top-notch reputation.
Visually Oregon City seems either too dark or to bright, e.g. here the new lights on the bridge made the river seem very dark visually, but photographically it balanced out very nicely, only masked/brushed in some shorter exposures bits of the brightest bridge lights to get it to balance out. From a fun night in Oregon City with the PDXNightowls. NB18360-62
The cam belt needs to be visually inspected every 30,000 miles on my car, a Seat Mii. Inspecting the cam belt is super easy. Remove the cover and the chamer the cam belt runs is can be seen. I put the car in to gear and pull it along until the cam belt has done one circuit allowing it to be inspected ocer its entire length. The whole task is easy and quick.
This car has done 109,000 miles and has only needed servicing. Nothing looks like it will break any time soon. The design, engineering and build of this car is top quality. It does 61 to 71 mpg, it is petrol engined only, no hybrid. This car is simple, light and aerodynamic.
New lego instruction!) pacific rim . Zane mech inspired with atlas destroyer (visually created by @francescobog87 with this amazing body work) (link in my bio) #legopacificrim #lego #mech #legomech #legomecha #ninjago #legoninjago
We went to the National Leprechaun Museum yesterday and was so surprised at how visually stunning it was!!!! totally unexpected :) www.leprechaunmuseum.ie
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Perhaps the most visually compelling element in the Over mansion is this exquisitely detailed Classical inspired porch pediment. It combines lines from Classical Antiquity with Georgian era details reinterpreted though early 20th century eyes and tastes. Although merely part of an architectural statement, I view this as a genuine artistic statement worthy of careful study to fully appreciate the Old World workmanship from this era over a century ago. The stylized symmetrical Georgian Revival window at the center of the pediment was missing for a while but an exact replica was made for a previous restorer. Over 20 years of careful restoration work has gone into this mansion and continues.
Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Windermere, constructed in 1880-81, is significant as the oldest-known large apartment complex remaining in an area that was one of Manhattan's first apartment-house districts. With its exuberant display of textured, corbelled, and polychromatic brickwork, the Windermere complex is a visually compelling, imposing, eclectic, and unified group of three buildings anchoring the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and West 57th Street. Adding to its significance is the Windermere's role in the history of women's housing in New York City. In the late 1890s, in an era in which housing options for single, self-supporting women were relatively limited, the Windermere was recognized as a remarkable home for a substantial population of these so-called "New Women." As such, it appears to have anticipated later residential projects in the city catering specifically to bachelor women.
Upon its completion, the Windermere, which is attributed to architect Theophilus G. Smith, stood within an area that had been sparsely settled only ten years before. By the mid-1880s, this area was home to several prominent examples of the apartment house, which was then a new and evolving residential building type. Today, the Windermere and the later, 1883-85 Osborne (a designated New York City Landmark) are the only- known large apartment houses or large apartment complexes dating from this district's early years.
The seven-story Windermere buildings are of impressive scale, topped by story-high cornices, and crowned, at No. 400 West 57th Street, by a high, false pediment with an inset, blind brick arch. Although they vary in width, the three Windermere buildings are united by common materials, decorative elements, and design into an asymmetrical group combining features of the Queen Anne style with brick polychromy and horizontal banding typical of the High Victorian Gothic, and with Romanesque elements including round- arched windows and the round arches of the Windermere's massive, machicolated cornices.
Among the Windermere's most notable features are the three-story bowed oriels at No. 400 West 57th Street; the segmental arches used as a framing device on both the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades; the use of contrasting Ohio stone trim; and the robust, channeled brick pilasters, which corbel upon reaching the cornices. Changes to the buildings over the years have included the addition of windows at the cornice level on the Ninth Avenue façade, and alterations to the ground floor of No. 400, including the removal of the original paired entrance portico and stoop, and the resurfacing of the façade with stone veneer. The Windermere's primary facades, which remain substantially intact after nearly 125 years, are among the features that distinguish the Windermere as an outstanding example of a large apartment complex of its time.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The Early New York Apartment House
Although merchants in Colonial New York lived "over the store" with their families, servants, and apprentices, by the early nineteenth century, new residential neighborhoods were developing away from Lower Manhattan's business district. By the 1830s, with the weakening of the apprentice system, New York's wage- earners found lodging in boarding houses, rented rooms, or the early tenement buildings, while artists and merchants typically lived in private three- or four-story rowhouses. But by 1860, New York's skyrocketing population - which increased from 33,171 in 1790 to more than half a million in 1850 - had pushed private- house prices out of the reach of most members of the middle class. By 1866, those who could not afford their own houses included "professional men, clergymen, shopkeepers, artists, college professors, and upper-level mechanics." Some middle-class families adapted by moving into boarding houses, but living with other families in a subdivided former rowhouse conflicted with the era's middle-class values, which stressed the "individual private house as the protector of family privacy, morality, and identity." In the years following the Civil War, new types of multiple dwellings emerged to cater to those of greater means than the poor or working-class, who remained largely confined to the tenement or rooming house.
Among New York's first apartment houses were two designed by Richard Morris Hunt: the Stuyvesant Apartments (1869-70, demolished) at 142 East 18th Street, and Stevens House (1870-72, demolished), on the south side of 27th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Buildings such as these led one observer to write in 1874 that "the successful establishment of a few elegant apartment houses for the rich demonstrated to those of moderate means the possibility of multiple tenancy without the risk of social debasement."
Although the Panic of 1873 slowed the construction of flats buildings in New York, construction took off, with an improving economy, after 1876. (As opposed to tenements, in which residents shared bathing facilities and toilets, both flats buildings and apartment houses had self-contained suites of rooms; the latter term generally referred to the more luxurious buildings, particularly those with elevators.) Between 1875 and 1879, approximately 700 new flats buildings were erected in New York; 516 were built in 1880 alone. By 1880, "the French flat, catering to the middle class, was a fixture of the city's architecture." Relatively few of these new buildings were architecturally distinguished; nevertheless, a "revolution in living," as the New York Times deemed it in 1878, was occurring, and by the mid-1880s, more New Yorkers lived in multiple dwellings than in rowhouses.
Most of the early flats buildings were located on the Upper East Side, east of Third Avenue. But as the city's architects moved, in the late 1870s, toward the creation of the "mammoth apartment house," much of the new apartment house construction occurred in the Ladies' Mile district and in "the new apartment district west of the luxury quarter." This area in the West 50s and low West 60s, largely undeveloped in the early 1870s, was bordered on the east by Fifth Avenue, then the city's poshest residential street; it was above the infamous Tenderloin, and east of the Lower West End, a working-class neighborhood between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues that would later become known as San Juan Hill. The extension of the Sixth Avenue Elevated to West 58th Street, and of the Ninth Avenue Elevated through the Upper West Side in the late 1870s, sparked the area's growth, particularly along West 59th Street; the pioneering apartment house there was the Bradley (John G. Prague, 1877, demolished), a luxury building at 30 West 59th. Nearby, directly on Fifth Avenue between West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, was a slightly earlier luxury building, the first Osborne (Duggin & Crossman, 1876, demolished), which was considered at the time to be "the finest apartment house in New York."
Despite their importance as early luxury apartment houses, both the six-story, six-bay-wide Bradley, and the five-story, seven-bay-wide Osborne, were relatively modest in scale. By the late 1870s, numerous medium-sized and larger apartment houses would fill the blocks of this rapidly developing area. To these were added the 80-foot-high, seven-story Windermere, in 1881.
The early 1880s would see a huge leap in apartment-house scale and sophistication, epitomized by such massive structures as the eleven-story new Osborne (James E. Ware, 1883-85, a designated New York City Landmark) at Seventh Avenue and West 57th Street; and by the Central Park Apartments, or "Spanish Flats" (Hubert, Pirsson & Co., 1883, 1885, demolished), a complex of eight, ten-story buildings located east of Seventh Avenue between West 58th and West 59th Streets. Farther uptown, on Eighth Avenue between West 72nd and West 73rd Streets, Edward Clark would build the Dakota (Henry J. Hardenburgh, 1882-84, a designated New York City Landmark), the first major residential building on the Upper West Side. Construction of such large apartment buildings was halted soon afterwards, however, as the 1885 passage of the Daly Law limited dwelling houses to 80 feet in height on the avenues, and 70 feet on side streets. These height restrictions would remain in effect until 1901.
During its early years, the apartment house remained "an experiment," as "what constituted the best or the most convenient or the most luxurious flat had to be subjected to constant revision, for there was no body of experience or literature to guide either architects or architectural critics." Architects drew upon various styles, often mixing them together. Developers and architects sought to strike a balance between communal living and the privacy of the rowhouse, in a climate in which the apartment house's long-term success was not a foregone conclusion. In 1877, with large numbers of vacancies in the Albany and Osborne, the Real Estate Record concluded that apartment houses were failing to draw the "better class of people" from private houses; by the mid-1880s, with the Dakota half-vacant, the Spanish Flats a financial failure, and numerous examples existing of unprofitable apartment-house ventures, some concluded that "the majority of upper- middle- and upper-class people still preferred houses over apartments."
By 1885, during the early years of the New York apartment house, the "new apartment district" west of Fifth Avenue had seen the construction of a diverse array of medium and large apartment houses, from the early luxury Bradley building, to numerous five- and six-story buildings like the Albany and Sonoma, to massive, towering apartment houses and apartment complexes like the 1883-85 Osborne and the Central Park Apartments. The Windermere, with its imposing bulk - its massive, story-high cornice and false pediment making it appear even larger than its seven-story height - is distinguished from the modestly scaled, pre-1885 residential buildings remaining in the area. Older than the Osborne Apartments to its east, the Windermere constitutes the oldest-known large apartment house or large apartment complex remaining in this district. With the exception of the Manhattan (Charles W. Clinton, 1879-80) at Second Avenue and East 86th Street, the Windermere may be the oldest large apartment house or large apartment complex remaining in New York City today.
Construction and Early History
Located at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and West 57th Street, the Windermere is comprised of three separate buildings - a corner building and two narrower buildings to its west - all of which are faced with red Philadelphia brick and trimmed with tan and black Philadelphia brick, stone, and tile. Although these buildings vary in width and have distinctive facades, the use of the same materials on all facades and the display of common decorative features - such as horizontal banding elements that extend across the Ninth Avenue façade and carry over to the West 57th Street facades of all three buildings - endow the Windermere with the appearance of a unified group. Press accounts from the early years of the Windermere often implied that it was a single building, or reinforced the conception of the three buildings as part of a common complex by using the Windermere name to refer to separate individual buildings. The 1899 G.W. Bromley map showed the complex as a single large building labeled "Windemere."
While in 1867, the lots between 55th and 59th Streets, and between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, held only a few scattered buildings, by 1879, the area had begun to fill in with structures. Still, at the end of the 1870s, the Windermere site, which was valued at $22,500 in 1880, had not been built upon.
Construction on all three buildings proceeded concurrently, with work on the corner building beginning on July 26, 1880, and the other two started on August 17, 1880. The three buildings would vary in size, with the corner building, extending for 115 feet along Ninth Avenue and 50 feet along West 57th Street, being the largest. It would house three families on each of its upper floors and two on the first floor, or a total of 20 families, and would also have two ground-floor stores. The center building would be only 20 feet wide, and would house one family on each of the first five floors; the upper two stories were "to be used as drying rooms or by families on [the] top stories of [the] adjoining house." The 30-foot-wide, westernmost building would house a total of 14 families - two on each floor. In total, the Windermere would contain 39 units.
All three buildings were completed on August 30, 1881. William E. Stewart was listed as their owner, and Theophilus George Smith as their architect. An attorney, Nathaniel A. McBride, was also involved with the project; all three men, at the time of the Windermere's construction, were listed as being at the same address, 152 Broadway.
Little information has been found on other building projects that McBride, Stewart, and Smith may have been involved with in New York City. McBride was born around 1842, and although a lawyer by profession, he was listed as a "real estate speculator" in the early 1900s. Stewart, a New York City native, was also a lawyer. Smith, listed only once in city directories as an architect, and at other times as a surveyor or civil engineer, designed a handful of tenements and rowhouses on the Upper West Side between 1877 and 1881.
In April 1881, several months before its completion, the Windermere was profiled in a New York Times article on "the growing West Side." It was described, along with several other new buildings, as representative of the high-quality construction occurring in the area west of Fifth Avenue and north of 42nd Street, which was then undergoing rapid urbanization. In addition to the completion of new elevated railroad lines, additional factors spurring apartment house construction in the area, according to the Times, were that "times are good, money is plentiful and cheap, and capitalists and owners of property are encouraged by these circumstances to improve their real estate." As described in the article, each Windermere apartment of seven to nine rooms would be
"furnished with a buffet, sideboard, and pier glass. For the convenience of tenants who do not wish to cook in their own apartments, large kitchens are situated in the basement. Three hydraulic elevators, which are to run day and night, will be provided. The building will be heated with steam throughout, and a telephone connecting with all parts of the City will be placed at the disposal of all tenants. Electric bells in all the suites communicate with the janitor's rooms, and an automatic electric fire-indicator will notify the janitor of the breaking out of a fire in any part of the building, even if the tenants of the burning apartment are out."
The article also mentioned the provision of automatic fire-gongs in the inner courtyard and the suites, "abundant" fire escapes, and a rear passageway allowing for deliveries, as well as the presence of uniformed "hall boys" who were "to be on duty day and night."
It is unclear whether the Windermere was conceived of as a luxury apartment complex. According to a second-story floor plan filed near its time of construction, only two elevators were provided - in the corner and westernmost buildings - making the middle building a walk-up and its suites, technically, flats. Despite this, the middle building's flats were spacious, consisting of eight rooms each, including front and back parlors, a sitting room, and three bedrooms, as well as two fireplaces. The apartments in the westernmost building lacked the middle building's sitting room, extra parlor, and second fireplace, but had an additional bedroom. There were slight variations among the corner building's apartments, each of which had seven rooms.
The Times article gave the impression of the Windermere as a high-class apartment complex, mentioning its $350,000 cost and including it among buildings that were "to be first class in every particular." The promised amenity of telephone service likely would have been considered a luxury feature, as it was new at the time. In 1882, Real Estate Record called the "Windmere" (sic) a "magnificent apartment house" in telling of its sale by Nathaniel McBride; one year later, it included apartments there among a "list of first-class apartments unrented" in "most of the principal apartment houses in the city." The prices listed for the Windermere's available apartments, however, were considerably lower than for those in buildings like the Berkshire, Gramercy, or Palermo; seven- and nine-room suites at the Gramercy, for example, rented for $2,000 to $3,000 annually, while the Windermere's rooms were listed at between $600 and $1,100.
It seems likely that the presence of the noisy and sooty Ninth Avenue elevated train only a few feet from the Windermere's east façade would preclude the Windermere from achieving luxury status; the Windermere was also well west of most of the luxury apartment houses of the time, such as the Bradley and the Vancorlear (Henry J. Hardenburgh, 1879, demolished), which were located two blocks or more to the east. Finally, the promise of the owners, before construction was completed, to "furnish coal to the tenants at summer prices all the year round," implies a cost-consciousness among prospective tenants that would presumably be out of place in a true luxury apartment complex.
The Windermere, in its early years, attracted tenants that, if not wealthy, could be considered comfortably middle class. Among those living in the corner building (No. 400 West 57th Street) in 1890 were the superintendent, Henry Sterling Goodale; a druggist; an artist; three brokers; and a lawyer. Those living in the center building included Charles H. Harvey, who served as a delegate to the New York State Democratic Convention in 1894. Among the residents of the westernmost building (No. 406) were a company president, a trunk merchant, and a minister. Also living at the Windermere in its early years were the superintendent of the Protestant Episcopal City Mission (in 1887), and the president of the city's board of health (also in 1887).
By the end of the decade, the Windermere would attract attention as an unusual residential complex catering to the "New Woman."
The Post-Goodale Windermere
Henry Sterling Goodale left New York in 1900, apparently moving to Amherst Massachusetts, where he died in 1906. Although Goodale's reasons for leaving are unclear, he may have been driven away, at least in part, by a fire that occurred at the Windermere in 1899. Although the fire did not spread far, "the observatory and the greater part of Goodsell's (sic) apartments were destroyed," the New York Times reported.
With Goodale's departure, changes appear to have occurred at the Windermere. The building may have been undergoing renovations in 1900: the U.S. Census of that year shows only four families living in the 400 building, none in No. 404, and four families in No. 406. The families in No. 400 included a doctor, his wife, and son; a male head of household with two daughters and one female boarder; a civil engineer, who lived with his wife and daughter, and a servant; and a druggist who had been present in the building in 1890 and who lived with his wife and a servant. The families in No. 406 included a doctor, his wife, and two daughters; a minister who had been in the building in 1890, and who was there in 1900 with his four daughters; a male doctor, living alone; and an engineer, his wife and daughter, and their male boarder, who was a doctor.
Fires plagued the Windermere during the first decade of the twentieth century. After a major fire in 1907, the Times reported that the tenants of the Windermere were "mostly women."
By 1910, the area that the Windermere was in - north of 44th Street and west of Eighth Avenue - was losing population, as the new subways spurred the development of, and drew tenants to, attractive new apartment houses in Harlem and other areas of northern Manhattan. In 1912 Real Estate Record and Guide characterized the area between Seventh and Tenth Avenues and between 14th and 70th Streets as a "tenement and dwelling" district, distinguishing it from areas of "high class dwellings and apartments" north of 70th Street on the West Side and along the eastern side of Central Park.
The 1910 census gives the first clear picture of the building's tenant make-up following Goodale's departure. No. 400, the corner building, had approximately 40 residents, about 38 of them boarders. About 25 of the boarders were single women; typical occupations included stenographer, telephone operator, cashier, nurse, dressmaker, and saleslady. There were also three models; one of them, Amelia Rose, was profiled in a 1905 New York Times article on the "Evolution of the New York Artist's Model." Rose, who had posed for Charles Dana Gibson when she was eight years old, was "one of the best-known models in New York," modeling for, among others, Mary Lawrence Tonetti, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Daniel Chester French. Three of the male boarders were actors.
In 1910, the middle building, No. 404, apparently continued to be vacant. No. 406 appears to have remained almost entirely as individual flats, with 12 of the 14 flats occupied. Ten of the 12 families had boarders living under a male or female head of household; four of the families with boarders had at least one child. Of those households with boarders, seven had at least one female and at least one male boarder. The female boarders of No. 406 included two stenographers and two clerks, a nurse, a dressmaker, and a wax master; the male boarders included a railroad conductor, several chauffeurs and waiters, and two medical students, as well as a museum clerk, detective, hotel worker, plumber, doctor, and a driver for a milk company.
Between 1910 and 1920, the population of the Windermere exploded to approximately 225 residents. About 150 people were living at No. 400, within about 15 households; almost all of these households included "roomers," with one having ten, and another fifteen. Of No. 406's approximately 12 households, eight were headed by a husband and wife, and only one of them took in roomers. The 1920 Census showed a precipitous decline in the number of single women at the Windermere; only about 18 self-supporting women, with occupations including shopper, clerk, nurse, saleslady, laundress, and cashier, were living in all three buildings in that year. This trend in occupancy held in 1930, as relatively few women who were working outside the home lived at the Windermere. The occupations of the approximately 22 single working women included waitress, jeweler at the Tiffany store, general work at a hospital, waitress, operator at a factory, department store clerk, actress, and nurse.
The presence of a wax master and three actors in the Windermere in 1910 indicates that the building retained some artistic flavor into the 20th century. In 1905, Lillie Spencer, an artist and the daughter of the English-born painter Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902) was reported to be living there. Later residents would include Quinto Magnani (1897-1974), who composed the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera "The Argonauts" and who lived in the Windermere in 1929; and writer, painter, photographer, and sculptor May Mott-Smith (1879-1952), who lived at the Windermere from 1944 until her death. From to 1954 to 1958, the corner building was the home of Alonzo Hanagan (1911-1999), better known as Lon of New York, and his photography studio. Lon, known for his pioneering photographs of the male physique - which were both taboo and illegal in the 1940s and '50s - "created iconic images that both glorified the physiques of some of the most well-known bodybuilders of the time and documented the golden era of the sport," according to Reed Massengill. Lon moved to the Windermere, where he set up his studio in a large first-floor apartment, on the recommendation of Lou Elson, who also lived in the building and published the physique magazine Tomorrow's Man. Lon and Elson, working together, would launch four new physique magazines between 1954 and 1957. Later residents of the Windermere would include the actor Yaphet Kotto (1937- ) and silver screen icon Steve McQueen (1930-1980).
The Windermere was in the news in the 1980s when the building's agent, manager, and superintendent were convicted as part of a conspiracy to harass tenants into leaving the building. In 1998, the Times reported that the Windermere, at that time, had 165 single-room occupancy units and eight apartments; in 2002, it reported that only about a half-dozen tenants remained.
Design
With its seven-story Ninth Avenue and 57th Street facades topped by story-high cornices and crowned, on the 57th Street façade of the corner building by a one-story-high false pediment, the Windermere is notable, in part, for its impressive scale. This quality, along with its display of Queen Anne-, High Victorian Gothic-, and Romanesque Revival-style elements, and the exuberant corbelled, textured, and polychromatic brickwork of
both primary facades, make the Windermere a visually compelling, imposing, and eclectic architectural complex.
The Windermere's eclecticism is typical of large, 1880s apartment buildings. According to Elizabeth Cromley, in that decade, architects of large apartment houses sought "an individualism of style" to "mark out a large apartment block from nearby buildings.... Architects of the 1880s apartment houses favored eclectic styles ... which in turn served as identifying markers for apartment buildings." It was common for these new buildings, as does the Windermere with its segmented and complexly ornamented and textured facades, to exhibit "disjunctiveness," with "architectural details creat[ing] variety and disrupting] a single unified image.
The Windermere is comprised of three adjoining seven-story buildings. The functional independence of these buildings is made clear on their 57th Street facades, where they are separated from each other by brick pilasters. The presence, at each building, of a separate entrance portico and stoop - portions of which remain today, at Nos. 404 and 406 - also distinguishes the buildings from each other, as does the individualized handling of their window openings and window types. No. 400, the large corner building, is the only one to have three-story oriel windows; like No. 406, it also features square-headed windows paired below segmental arches. Both of these buildings differ in fenestration not only from each other but from the middle building, No. 404, which has neither the oriels nor the paired, square-headed windows.
Although each building features a massive brick cornice with corbelled brick arches, crowned by a heavy stone cymatium, the differing sizes and spacing of the arches, the projection of the middle building's roofline above the two other rooflines, and the prominent false pediment atop No. 400, also set off each building from the others. Each of the 57th Street facades is essentially symmetrical, except in the off-center placement of No. 404's entryway, but the three facades vary in width, with No. 400 the widest at 50 feet, No. 406 next at 30 feet, and No. 404, the middle building, the narrowest at 20 feet. Together, these three symmetrical facades combine to create, on 57th Street, a distinctive and picturesque, asymmetrical composition that is unified by common massing, materials, and design elements, but that communicates each building's independence. The Ninth Avenue elevation is similar to that of 57th Street in the manner in which shared ornament, features, and fenestration are brought together to create an expansive, asymmetrical, but unified façade.
The asymmetrical massing of the Windermere is representative of the Queen Anne style, as is the building's picturesque roof silhouette. The most distinctive feature of the roofline, which varies in height on both the Ninth Avenue and 57th Street elevations, is the false pediment on top of the 57th Street façade of the corner building. This pediment, which mimics the gables typically found on Queen Anne buildings, features the often-seen Queen Anne motif of a contrasting, inset arch, which is realized here in tan-colored brick. The oriel windows on the 57th Street façade are also representative Queen Anne-style features; semicircular in plan and supported by stone ancons, they recall, in simplified form, the oriel of Bruce Price's 1878 flats building at 21 East 21st Street. Other features consistent with the Queen Anne include the Windermere's red, Philadelphia-brick body and contrasting stone trim, the channeling on the chimney near the north end of the Ninth Avenue façade, and the manner in which the chimney corbels outward near its peak.
The chimney shares this channeling and corbelling with the Windermere's robust brick pilasters, which break down the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades into divisions of two and three bays. The channeling, also present on the body of the building, and the pilasters themselves, which are also consistent with the Queen Anne style, provide depth to the façade; they also provide surface texture, as does dogtoothed brick laid in horizontal and soldier courses, in panels below selected windows, and as infill between segmental arches and the square- headed window heads below. (The grouping of square-headed windows below a segmental arch, as at the fourth floor on the 57th Street façade, is another often-seen Queen Anne motif.)
Typical of the Romanesque Revival style, which was often combined with the Queen Anne on New York City rowhouses, are the Windermere's round-headed windows. At the fourth floor on both the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades, the extrados of these arches are trimmed with stone. Also typical of the Romanesque Revival are the round arches of the primary facades' monumental, machicolated cornices.
In designing the Windermere, Smith also drew upon the then-waning High Victorian Gothic style. The most representative High Victorian Gothic features of the Windermere are its bold constructional polychromy and its horizontal banding, achieved chiefly through the use of tan- and black-colored, and dogtoothed brick courses, and Ohio stone belt courses, that contrast with the facades' red brick, and tan-colored decorative brickwork in diamond-, cross-, and zigzag-shaped motifs below the fifth floor on both primary facades. Additional color is provided by a band of diamond-patterned, blue-and-white tile on the 57th Street façade. These High Victorian features are complemented by more generic Gothic Revival elements, including the quatrefoils present on the extant entrance porticos of Nos. 404 and 406, and the label moldings that are implied in stone at the fifth floor on the 57th Street façades of Nos. 400 and 406, and at the fifth-floor windows on the Ninth Avenue façade.
Smith's decision to use pilasters to break up both facades, including the 115-foot expanse of the Ninth Avenue façade, into the two- and three-bay divisions typical of rowhouses, may have represented a conscious effort to appeal to and comfort prospective tenants. In 1880, the large middle-class apartment house was still a new phenomenon, and as historian Elizabeth Cromley points out, designing one for prospective tenants who saw the rowhouse as the norm presented special challenges. "Since the private house had been the only kind of architecture that provided mid-century New Yorkers with the image of home," she writes, "designers of apartments were faced with serious problems. How were they to make larger-than-house-size multiple dwellings fit that image?" It was not unusual, into the 1880s, for new apartment houses and apartment complexes, including the Central Park Apartments, to have multiple entrances; by using these entrances to, in effect, break down large buildings or complexes into smaller components, architects may have been seeking to assuage tenants who were used to smaller-scale residences.
In these early years of the flats and apartment house, architects also drew upon rowhouse imagery, as in the 1878 flats building at 21 East 21st Street, which "rested comfortably within the image of a house." An unrealized 1874 proposal by Henry Hudson Holly for a "family hotel" similarly included seven separate entrances, all with high stoops, "to create the impression of a row of houses, comforting to families made uneasy by multiple dwellings." In this climate, in which architects were finding their way towards a new vocabulary for the large apartment house, and in which the rowhouse was the chief symbol of home for middle-class New Yorkers, it may well have made sense for Smith to draw upon rowhouse imagery to attract prospective tenants. With its Ninth Avenue and 57th Street facades broken down into two- and three-bay divisions, its multiple entrances - off-center at No. 404, and originally paired at No. 400, possibly to give the impression of two entrances to adjoining, three-bay houses - and its stoops, the Windermere appears to exhibit a tension between the rowhouse and the emerging large apartment house that would be appropriate for a new apartment house of its time.
Differentiating the three buildings from each other may have assisted the Windermere's owners in targeting each one to different clienteles. This appears not to have been an uncommon practice at the time: at the Florence, completed in 1878 at Fourth Avenue and 18th Street, three different classes of residents were expected to occupy its 42 suites, including bachelors, families, and young married couples. The presence of oriel windows at the corner building of the Windermere, for example, may have represented an effort to make that building more attractive to higher-paying tenants and to distinguish them from those living in the adjoining walk-up flats building.
Description
Ninth Avenue
The Windermere's asymmetrical, 115-foot long Ninth Avenue façade is divided into five large bays. Each of these bays is essentially symmetrical, except for the second-northernmost bay; there, the two windows per floor are slightly off center. Each of the five bays is defined by channeled brick pilasters. The northernmost three of these pilasters appear to have been removed below the second floor's sill level; the other three pilasters run from below the second story's stone sill course to the top of the Ninth Avenue cornice. The northernmost bay of the Ninth Avenue façade is split by a chimney, which projects from the façade and features channeling, dogtoothed brick panels and courses, and recessed brick panels. The chimney extends from a point that is horizontally in line with the springlines of the second-story's round window arches to the top of the cornice, where it has six channels and corbels outward, ultimately piercing the cymatium. The other pilasters on the Ninth Avenue façade, except for the second-southernmost, engage the cymatium rather than piercing it. The central bay's roofline rises slightly above the rooflines of the other bays.
The window openings on the Ninth Avenue façade are horizontally and vertically aligned, and are grouped in a pattern, from south to north, of 3-2-3-2-2. Round-arched window openings with brick voussoirs and stone springers and keystones, are present at the second and sixth floors. Round-arched window openings with brick voussoirs, without keystones, and with stone extrados trim, are present in the southernmost, central, and second-northernmost bays at the fourth floor. At the second floor, these window openings are above a stone sill course; the round-headed openings at the fourth floor are above a stone ledge; and the windows at the sixth floor have stone sills. Square-headed window openings with stone lintels are present at the third, fifth, and seventh floors, and at the fourth floor, where they are placed below segmental arches with stone springers in the second-southernmost and northernmost bays. At the third and seventh floors, these windows have stone sills; at the fifth floor, they are above a stone ledge located at sill level. At the square-headed window openings, two additional courses of stone - one just below lintel level, and other just above sill level - are present in between and flanking the windows. At the fifth floor windows, a stone course is present just above sill level, in between and flanking the windows; stone blocks wrap the window heads in a form recalling that of a label molding.
The second floor of the Ninth Avenue façade is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street façades. Three single courses of tan brick, interrupted by the façade's windows and pilasters, run horizontally between the sills and lintels. A stone sill course also runs the length of the façade, pierced by its pilasters.
At the third floor, in all of the bays except the northernmost, brick channeling is present between the windows. Zigzag, cross-shaped, diamond-shaped, and other decorative elements in tan brick flank, and are located between, the window openings in the three central bays. Cross-shaped elements in tan brick flank are located between the outer window openings and their flanking pilasters in the southernmost bay. A single course of tan brick runs across the façade at the third floor, interrupted by the window openings, pilasters, channeling, and chimney. Running across each of the bays below the third-floor windows' sills is a single soldier course of dogtoothed brick.
At the fourth floor, in the northernmost and second-southernmost bays, the Ninth Avenue façade features square-headed window openings, each of which is located below a segmental arch. The area between the windows' lintels and the arches above is filled with dogtoothed brickwork. In the second-southernmost bay, the window openings are not centered below their arches, and three single courses of tan brick run horizontally between the window openings and between the openings and their flanking pilasters. In the northernmost bay, each window opening is centered below its arch; two single courses of tan brick run horizontally between the openings, as does a course of stone, which is horizontally aligned with the stone springers of the fourth floor's round-headed windows. A diamond-shaped element in tan brick is present between the two northernmost window openings. A stone ledge runs across the fourth floor, pierced by every pilaster and by the chimney. Below this ledge, beneath each window, is a dogtoothed brick panel. In the southernmost, third-southernmost, and second-northernmost bays, round-headed window openings similar to those on the corresponding floor of No. 404 West 57th Street are present. The arches feature stone springers with brick voussoirs and are without keystones. Their extrados are trimmed with stone. Triangular decorative elements in tan brick are present above the window openings, horizontally placed between the openings and abutting the pilasters.
At the fifth floor, channeling is present between, and flanking, the window openings. A stone ledge runs the length of the façade, pierced by the southernmost and third-northernmost pilasters.
The sixth floor is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street façade, with five dogtoothed brick courses abutting the seventh-floor window sills above. A single stretcher course of tan brick runs directly below the dogtoothing. Two pairs of tan-brick courses run horizontally between the sill and lintel levels, sandwiching two rows of brick dogtoothed soldier courses.
The seventh floor is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street facade, with alternating rows of stretchers and brick dogtoothed courses above the lintels, and four single courses of tan-brick banding, and channeling between the sills and lintels.
The Ninth Avenue facade is crowned by a broad stone and brick cornice, which is topped by a large cymatium. It is pierced by four window or door openings, one in each of the four southernmost bays. At the central bay, corbelled brickwork supports a stone belt course, from which ten arches with brick voussoirs spring. These arches' extrados are trimmed with stone. The cornice at the southernmost bay has ten round arches with stone springers; below the two northernmost arches are circular openings. The cornice at the second-southernmost bay has eight round arches with stone springers; below all except the northernmost arch are circular openings. The cornice at the second-northernmost bay has nine round arches with stone springers; the cornice at the northernmost bay has eight round arches with stone springers; below all of these arches are circular openings.
All of the window openings in the northernmost bay have been bricked up. All of the window openings in the four southernmost bays at the second, third, and fifth floors have been covered over. Ten windows - six one-over-ones, two one-over-twos, and two two-over-twos - are present at the fourth floor. Seven windows - five one-over-ones, one two-over-one, and one two-over-two - are present at the sixth floor. Three windows - one two-over-two and two one-over-ones - are present at the seventh floor. Windows or doors are present in two of the four openings at the cornice level.
A metal fire escape is attached to the facade in the second-southernmost bay. It extends from the second floor to the cornice level, where a metal platform runs the length of the three central bays. Graffiti has been written on the facade at the second through seventh floors in the second-southernmost bay, and below the second-floor sill level.
No original material appears to remain at the ground floor on the Ninth Avenue facade. The setback entrance to the upper floors of No. 400 is located there, and is surrounded by metal panels. There are two storefronts, both currently vacant; one is metal, and the other is covered with stone veneer. Stone or brick veneer, or metal, cover most of the ground floor facade.
No. 400 West 57th Street- South Facade
On the partially visible, secondary south facade of 400 West 57th Street, four window openings are present at each of the second through seventh floors. Most of these window openings have been covered over. Three window openings are present at the cornice level, including one tripartite window. These openings do not appear to be original to the building and may indicate the existence of a rooftop addition behind them.
- From the 2005 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
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Below, the full interview with Dr. Nathan Myhrvold (from Nov 21, 2011):
Unless you’ve been hiding under some kind of rock, you’ve probably heard of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the stunning six-volume, 2,400-page, 50-pound*, $625 cookbook that came out early this year. Nathan Myhrvold, whose team of 30 spent three-and-a-half years** in a 20,000 square foot lab (complete with a high speed camera and a machine shop) working on the tome, was in town this week to speak to about 250 food and science nerds at an event hosted by The Cookbook Store at the Isabel Bader Theatre. A staggering polymath, Myhrvold had already acquired a pair of master’s (economics and geophysics) and a Princeton Ph.D. (theoretical and mathematical physics) by age 23, before working with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, holding the Chief Technology Officer job at Microsoft, running a patent empire called Intellectual Ventures and dabbling in photography, paleontology and, of course, cutting-edge food. We sat with Myhrvold over breakfast to talk about the surprising success of Modernist Cuisine and what the future holds for the project.
RS: Some say that the Modernist Cuisine is the cookbook of all cookbooks. Others say it’s like an encyclopedia. Then there are those that look at it as a coffee table book because it’s so visually appealing.
NM: If you’ve got a small apartment, you can use it as the coffee table! [Laughs]
RS: How would you classify the set?
NM: The book was designed to be all those things – everyone can take from it what they want. If you go into a kitchen store, there’s tones of fancy knifes, copper pots, and those things that people buy – some use them as professional tools; some people use them as a status symbol, haha; some people love food and all aspects of it. The book has all the capabilities of those things.
Most people are passionate and curious about cooking, regardless of who you are, then the pictures or the information may be enough. I say passionate and curious because if you are more utilitarian in your goal – a journalist in the UK had said “the top selling cookbook in the UK is Jaime Oliver’s 30 minute meals” – that’s very different. It’s a fine book, but if all you want is to cook a meal in 30 minutes, then go buy his book or a hundred other books like that. That’s a very mission oriented view of cooking. If you’re on a mission, then people already service that, but my book is about satisfying passion and curiosity in a broad way. It’s not about 30 minute meals... there are things in the book that can be used for 30 minute meals and if you wanted a 30 minute meal comparison between Jaime Oliver and our book, we’d be happy to rise to the occasion. But there are also recipes in the book that take a hundred hours [laughs].
If you’re task oriented (what’s the quickest way to cook a 30 minute meal), then I say, buy his book. But if you’re curious how things work, then that’s a different thing.
In terms of whether you need other cook books? Well I have other cookbooks.
This book is designed to be based on 21st century cuisine. It is a broad survey of how traditional cooking methods actually work. So we take (not every single method but) all the principal methods of Western cooking, and many principal methods of Asian or other styled cooking, in the context of 21st century cuisine. Every modern technique we can find. We’re not saying that traditional techniques go away; there’s just no reason to reprint them, lots of other people have done so. Most cases there is an improvement. That was our primer – to be the basic foundation for 21st century cuisine but only in the context of everything else that has happened.
RS: What was the inspiration and motivation behind the massive project?
NM: The book is so different from traditional cookbooks, if you can get by its cost, one thing that cookbooks are about is that it’s simplified. Ask any chef who’s written a cookbook, the cookbook editors are sort of relentless about making in laymen’s term. People ask if they can do every recipe at home, and I say no. I don’t understand why that’s a good goal, at least in my mind, for this book because we’re trying to explain how cooking works. It’s the fundamental question: would you like to hear the real story or would you like to hear the dumbed-down story?
There are a lot of people who would like to know the real story. The fact is that 25% of the recipes in the book – forget about it – you’re not going to do it. To read about them and learn about them at the same time as other chefs do. Another one of the goals of our book is that everyone who reads it will learn something, even if you’re Ferran Adria or Heston Blumenthal or the best chef in the world – someone’s going to learn something they never knew before.
I think it’s kind of cool, if Thomas Keller learns something from the book and you learn it the same time that he is. It flies in the face of the idea that everything has to be dumbed-down because it’s so different than conventional wisdom. Today I get a lot of journalists saying that this is really for the professional cook – that’s a paternalistic view. It’s not for everybody. If you look online you’ll find thousands of people who are not professions but are cooking from it, sharing their experiences on a blog... any market is not uniform. It’s interesting and complicated.
Another inspiration for the book was the sous vide thread on eGullet that started in 2004 and a lot of people checked in from all walks of life. One of the guys, Bryan Zupon was a Junior at Duke University and he was cooking sous vide in his dorm room, in part because he figured out it was a sort of loop hole that they didn’t allow hot plates but you could use a water bath. This is the spirit of all these people sharing on eGullet.
RS: Given the somewhat niche appeal of the subject, the fact that it’s being reprinted a second time, has the reception for the cookbook surprised you?
NM: There’s two ways you can design a product, broadly speaking: you can go do market research. Most big companies do that – they do focus groups and surveys. It’s probably the way most products are designed and tested. That’s not what we did. The other way you can come up with a design is if you do what you want, and God I hope someone will buy it. That’s the way art is made and great restaurants are made. Appealing to committees and asking people what they want gives you a limited view of things. Having your own vision, like novels that are successful or non-fiction journalism, are pursued by people who have their own idea. So that’s what we did. We had this vision.
Once we had it done and we could show [publishers] what we had done, then it was more concrete vs. “I’m going to cut cans in half, take pictures... they’ll ask what famous photographer are you using? Oh I’m going to do it myself and a guy I found on Craigslist.” I’ll just sound like a creepy person. But after we had it [done], a couple publishers were very interested... but one wanted to print 2000 [copies]. I was like we’re done. It might be a smart number to print, but I was so deep into it that I couldn’t just sell 2000 copies worldwide. That’s just too little. Of course, so far we’ve sold 25,000 and hoping for 30,000 this year, and that’s just in English. There’s still French, German and Spanish. Over time, we hope to sell really a lot... because you want impact. People cook to have other people eat it. If you hire the best chef in Toronto, say “we’re going to give you double your salary but as soon as you finish every one of your dishes we’re going to put it down the garbage disposal,” they wouldn’t want to do it. It wouldn’t be fun. So we wrote these books to have impact. So we hope that people would buy it. Some are going to say “why is it so expensive? Why couldn’t we use shitty paper?” We were making a quality product. Quality actually matters. There’s great rustic, peasant style food all over the world, but there’s also something wonderful about food that’s been refined and elevated. For the same reason it’s wonderful that the world has a Per Se or French Laundry or a Fat Duck. We thought, we should have a really quality book. We’re not going to skimp on the paper and printing – the cost difference was really small – maybe you’d save $20, but so what? It’s not a lot.
If you bought the same number of pounds of cookbooks, if you tried to replicate the same content for traditional cooking, you’d buy more than $600. It would cost you much more money than my book. And it wouldn’t be as cohesive because this was done by one team. We had no idea if it would work, but it seems like it has.
RS: So would you say that real potential can’t be realized until you try, and that you can’t let limitations restrict yourself?
NM: That’s one of the main reasons I did the book. I realized that this could be my contribution to cooking. Maybe in a parallel universe, I became a chef instead of working in Microsoft, going into physics and all the other things I did. If I started a restaurant at this stage in my life – for Seattle to have one more great restaurant, that would be nice – but it wouldn’t have the impact on people. I’d have more impact in i.e. Toronto with this book than if I say had a restaurant in Seattle. I’m not complaining about restaurants, but the ability for someone to find investors, to find space, to create a restaurant, although it’s difficult, people can do that. But a cookbook like this that has all the properties it has and covers all the techniques... who’s going to do that? Big publishing companies are incredibly conservative. Maybe they’re right to be conservative, but in this case, I love food and I love this kind of food, I knew how hard it was to learn this kind of cooking because I was learning it myself and it required lots of research, asking chefs around the world, a lot of experimentation... if I could pull all of this together to make a definitive book, coalesce all the information in one place, it would be hugely valuable. For the chef who would never get a stage at El Bulli or The Fat Duck a huge opportunity. That’s what I hope to be my contribution to food.
RS: Do you find any of the chefs resisting this because now you’ve explained how to do many of these once mysterious techniques?
NM: In general I’ve found most of the Modernist chefs are incredibly helpful. If you ask Ferran [Adria] how to do something, he’ll tell you, but he doesn’t have to explain to everyone what he’s doing. And even in his wonderful cookbook, he didn’t have the page count to go into tutorials. Some of the chefs don’t have the patience, because doing all those step by step things; they’re on to the next cool thing. That’s fair enough, that’s what they’re supposed to do. If you went to a great fashion designer and asked them, teach me how to sew [laughs]... It’s wasn’t a question of people hording ideas (maybe there’s a few people who do hoard ideas but that wasn’t the big phenomenon).
RS: Could it be that this is part of the culture of this movement/cuisine/technique? Where in the past with more traditional methods much of those techniques are guarded or protected vs. now it’s all about sharing knowledge to help advance things?
NM: Cooking still has an interesting structure. The medieval guilds were all about apprenticeships; you learned by turning at 13-year old to a master who treated him a little better than a slave and then they grew until they became the master, where upon they started abusing apprentices. That was the way most professions were. There are professional chef schools, but many of the greatest chefs are self taught which is fine; there’s still a whole idea of apprentices working their way up which is great so long as there’s a certain amount of shared information.
There’s a lot more than gimmicks and tricks; there’s a fundamental basis to the way you do things. Now that we know a way to describe modern cooking, it’s understanding what effects you’re trying to achieve with the food and then understand how to get them. Traditional techniques are sentimental and contradictory. Take roast chicken: crispy skin, moist flesh. Traditional cooking typically tries to make a compromise. Sentimental philosophy of Modernist cuisine is that you cook the inside one way and the outside another way. It’s all about the idea of control – another big idea in Modernist cuisine – you can be in control. The idea that it’s all mystical, that it requires vast amounts of human skill
RS: In working on the MC , what was the biggest myth you debunked?
NM: We found a bunch of errors in food safety – there’s a whole chapter on that. One example is eggs cooked to order should be brought to 145-degrees for 1-second. That does nothing. It’s sort of a cosmetic regulation. There’s a regulation for fish: 145-degrees for 1-second which overcooks the fish. If they said 145-degrees for 12-minutes, it would have some sense to it, but for 1-second it means nothing.
Duck confit is one that some chefs say, if you cook duck in fat, it will create this unique flavour. That’s a fraud. I figured that out because I was trying to understand how the fat can actually penetrate into the meat because fat molecules are large and they won’t go through the membrane. Firstly, what people call fat is actually fatty tissue. Most of what people object to is that it’s rubbery – that’s the collagen matrix that holds the fat; you have to render it to get the fat. Duck fat melts at 14-degrees Centigrade, so how come you have to cook it so hard? It’s not the fat; it’s that the lipids are enclosed in collagen and the collagen needs to be broken down because the lipids are trapped. It’s that collagen that gives rubbery duck skin. I realized the fat couldn’t possibly penetrate the meat so how does it create a unique flavour and texture? And the confit nature of the meat isn’t just at the surface, it goes all the way in. So it had to be a fraud.
We did a taste test, and we either cooked it traditional, sous vide or steamed it. As long as the time and temperature are the same, in a blind taste test, we couldn’t tell the difference. When I tell some chefs this, they almost get angry and don’t agree with it. But I say look, it’s not about agreeing, try it. If you can try in a blind taste test, maybe you can taste things I can’t taste, but no one in our group could taste it.
One of the essences of science is to know this idea that hypotheses can be disproven. And chefs have to understand that there are a lot hypotheses that people take for granted. Some of its correct but a lot isn’t.
RS: What’s your next cookbook project?
NM: Well in terms of a project that’s a little smaller than a giant multi-year, multi-volume extravaganza again. We did one of those, and I’m sure I’ll do another one again at some point, but the books that will come next will be a smaller thing – single topic book. And I can see a list of many single topic books. Imagine if I was doing another volume to Modernist Cuisine? It is a lot of ways to make that next volume by taking a specific topic. But I would also like to see the pastry and desserts so hopefully. One thing that was special about Modernist Cuisine is that we did take this topic approach and we didn’t have any compromises, we wanted to cover everything out there. So we have to find areas that are worthy of our attention; approach different ethnic cuisines or a technique in more specialized form. So there’s a lot of different ways that you could slice it. So we’ll see what happens.
RS: One thing I’ve found interesting is that chefs who have been reticent to use the label “molecular gastronomy” are now suddenly happy to talk about “modern cuisine.” Thoughts?
NM: Well molecular gastronomy is a terrible name. We discuss the history of it in the book. Chefs hate it. The ironic thing is that Hervé This, who’s this French food scientist – he would tell you he’s the father of molecular gastronomy – he feels strongly that that term shouldn’t be used to describe restaurant cuisine, but used for science.
RS: I believe he now refers to it as Note by Note?
NM: The latest thing he’s excited about is called Note by Note cuisine, which I’m not sure I fully understand. It seems to be like if you start using a slang term... it’s possible to be widely used because not anybody knows precisely what it means because they use it in context. I haven’t seen any precise definition of it. Is seems to be about isolating specific characteristics of ingredients and then having a sequence of these things in a menu which is analogous to playing notes of music. That’s my interpretation from the little I’ve seen, and Max, my co-author who reads French better than I do, said that seems to be kind of what he does.
Anyway, Hervé doesn’t want to call it molecular gastronomy; the chefs don’t want to call it molecular gastronomy. Molecular sounds very off-putting to people. If you take a scientific perspective of course everything is molecules and it’s not molecular biology. If there’s a reason to call it molecular biology – because that’s the study of unique molecules of life – and it’s molecules that that you’re concerned with, and there’s no sense that that’s true here. Historically molecular gastronomy was invented as a cool name for a conference. Hervé recently sent an email out to people that he was thrilled that this cuisine was being called modernist. Heston Blumenthal wrote a piece saying the same thing: that as far as he’s concerned, molecular is dead, it’s now modernist. I think modernist has a significant improvement over molecular: first, it’s more encompassing and broader. So what we mean by modern is that people cooking a wide range of styles, it’s not a single style. It includes people who cook foods that are deliberately different; the differentness is part of the point. If you go to Alinea, Moto or El Bulli part of the entire creative point is for it to be new and surprising. Just like artists that do that. There are people who use surprise as part of the experience. There are also a lot of chefs that don’t cook that way but modern techniques are still part of their cuisine. Modern art encompasses a wide range of different artistic styles. Modern art includes Jackson Pollock, the French Impressionists, Chuck Close doing photorealism and everything in between. In the same way modernist is a term for cooking, or a style of cuisine that is meant to be all encompassing.
RS: Do you eat out or cook more?
NM: Well it’s different. For starters, Seattle there are a lot of great restaurants, but there’s not a lot of great modernist restaurants. So when I travel, I like trying to experience other things that I don’t get at home. So great restaurants, ethnic restaurants and other takes on food are also nice to try. So when it’s places like Chicago, it’s places like Alinea, Moto and places like that but also Hot Doug’s and the French fries in duck fat are great. Ha ha ha.
RS: Have you tried horse fat fries? (Not there. I had to make it myself – it was terrible with having to render down the fat itself that had to be sourced, but...)
NM: Use a pressure cooker.
RS: Now I know.
NM: It’s great. What we do with rendering fat is use a pressure cooker and to use Mason jars to hold the fat with an inch of water under.
RS: What is your favourite cuisine? Restaurant? Do you find that having demystified the cooking process through the MC that you are less easily impressed?
NM: It’s not hard to go out to eat. The funny thing is that knowing how I would do it doesn’t mean I know how they would do it. There’s a tendency to over think things “oh yes, they must have done this and this and this and this cuz that’s how I’d do it.” But no actually.
In terms of harder to be impressed. You know those optical illusions? The lines... I don’t know if you know the trick? One of the lines looks longer? You can say we know, but the perception is very hard wired. The food is great, tastes great and it doesn’t really matter knowing how it’s made – it doesn’t affect how you experience it. Once you’ve had lots of great food and you know what it can taste like if it’s no overcooked you become more picky about how it’s overcooked – which is also pretty easy to forgive in a certain context. But it’s about being more aware.
RS: Comments on your dining experiences in Toronto?
NM: When I’m in a different city, I would eat with a local guide because usually when you come to a city, there’s a set of places that the concierge will tell you is the best restaurant in town. There are places that a guide like Zagat will tell you, then there’s a place that a foodie will take you. There is some overlap but not very much.
In Singapore there’s something called makansutra. The name is a sort of take on kamasutra: makan means eating (??) in a local language. And this crazy guy writes all about street food, a guy named Seto, and when I’m in Singapore, he takes me around. You go to like 30 places and at each one you order only one dish. It’s things from all across south east Asia and all the things that are unique there. So if there’s a Seto in every town, that would fantastic, but of course there isn’t.
Unfortunately didn’t have much of a chance [to explore Toronto]. I did have pre-arranged dinners at Splendido and Campagnolo, which was fine, but I ate at one Indian restaurant while I was here called Utsav. We asked one of the concierges, who’s an Indian woman, where to go for lunch. It was very good actually. Typical Indian dishes but we also didn’t want to walk. It was good. I love all food basically.
But sure, I’d love to come back to Toronto and explore a bit.
RS: You have such varied interests that take up your time. How much of it do you use to focus on food and MC?
NM: I’m interested in a lot of things. I try to do it to the best of my abilities.
In the case of paleontology, I write a number of articles on paleontology. Every few years I do one, it’s not very constant. And my contribution to paleontology is smaller, it’s a contribution but it’s not “Oh my god, I’m the world’s best paleontologist.” But it’s fun. And I’m going to keep doing it. My company - development and also inventing – and one of the things we try is to try to invent things that are solutions to problems. We might fail. We have a philosophy that it’s good for us to try to do those things. Again, you can tell me that the world doesn’t work or we shouldn’t be doing it that way.
The cookbook has been interesting because cooking has been something that, up until now, if you interviewed me about all my other things “oh yes, he’s also a really good cook, he once won a barbecue contest...” people would be like oh that’s an interesting little hobby. It’s not like it is a contribution that was important towards cooking, I mean, up until the book. The book was trying to be something that was very important. My relative contribution to cooking may well exceed my relative contribution to paleontology, whatever that means.
RS: They’re all significant contributions, but given all that you’ve accomplished and projects you’ve lined up for the future, what is it that you hope will be your legacy?
NM: Warren Buffet was asked when he was gone what he said was: god that guy was old. [laughs] So the legacy, I’m not at the stage in my life where I can worry about that. I’m hoping that I have a lot more years walking out of here [laughs].
It’s a funny question, because in paleontology, my paleontology friends will say “he done a few interesting things” and I’ll have some little legacy in paleontology but currently it will be little; maybe I’ll come up with something bigger later on. In physics and in other interests of mine, in those areas, yes in some of them, if you interviewed them after I was gone they’d say: “too bad he wasted his time in all that other stuff. Maybe he would be a successful guy if he didn’t waste all his time on all this other crap.” It’s funny because my friends in each area don’t quite understand why I would waste my time from their perspective. Lots of chef friends can’t quite understand why I don’t open a restaurant, because to them that is the best thing you can possibly do. So what’s up with that? They say “surely this book is how you were going to introduce your new restaurant.” Well, not so much. So within cooking I’m hoping the book has an impact. People write to be read; people cook to be eaten. So I really hope the book has a big impact. If it has a big impact, it would help a whole generation of cooks – at home and professionally – will help them get access to techniques that they couldn’t get otherwise. If you interview me 10 years from now, we’ll be able to say, “here’s the restaurants and the trends that have been influenced from the creation of this book.” I hope that there’ll be other books by that date, that I won’t be totally done, but if I was done today, I would hope that this book will be a good contribution, that people would have found it really useful. That’s as much as you could hope for.
RS: Thank you for sharing about the whole process of this project. It’s exciting to see the final product but I can’t imagine how hard those 5 years were when you were working through the trials and tribulations.
NM: There was a lot of work. There are things that don’t go how you’d like; there are those things that turn out really well. It was a great project. It’s terrific to see it now actually accepted by people.
RS: Are you thinking of any more translations of MC?
NM: Two languages: Chinese and Russian. If you look at what countries will hold the most high end restaurants – Canada is not going to quadruple its high end restaurants, you couldn’t. The number of high end restaurants will remain relatively constant (maybe they’ll grow at a few percent per year, but the population is flat and it’s already wealthy/successful country. The same is true for the United States or Europe. China, will have more high end restaurants – like how the United States went from in the 19th century it went from an agricultural country and the wild west and everything else into this urbanized industrial country – and that’s what’s happening in China. If you want to be influential... Plus China has this interesting combination of [having] rich culinary traditions of its own and everybody loves variety. So there will be more French restaurants developing , more sushi... If you lived in Shanghai or Beijing today, or Hong Kong – Hong Kong’s had a western economy for a while – so it’s got great restaurants of every variety. They’re actually selling the books in English in China through our printer. For the very rich people in China it doesn’t matter the books are in English. It’s also not a big influence on the culinary world. The challenge there is finding a way to get it translated in a cost effective way. If you told me that when we translate it to Chinese and I’ll never make any money on it, I’d still do it just because it’ll be a cool thing to do. It actually has many of the same properties that I said about China: it’s another unique situation where they’re growing more of a restaurant culture and growing more of an open society. Spanish is great, because not only do you get Spain but you get all of Latin America. So if you look at parts of the world that are more influential, the parts of the world that are developing are only part of the story. If you look back 20 or 30 years from now, it’s the parts of the world that are growing fast, they will go from having no culinary traditions to high end cuisine – that’s where you’ll have the most influence.
RS: And can we use the metaphor that “they’re really hungry for it” appropriately here?
NM: [Laughs]
RS: Thank you so much for your time.
* Random fact: Although both editions are printed on high quality paper, edition one used paper from Japan and weighed a mere 48-pounds. However, in wake of the tsunami earlier this year, the paper was no longer available and an equally high quality source, but slightly heavier product, from China was used. The ink alone weighs 4-pounds.
** Mhyrvold worked on the project for two years alone before having a team.
Wow. This seedy Hollywood nudie bar might consider getting a more enticing sign... This lady is just not very appealing -- in my opinion. Perhaps she looks better in the dark?
Visually identical to the Jenoptem models, this example came in great condition but out of collimation. Performance is not as good as my Jenoptem 7x50, image goes soft towards the edge of the field quicker than I would expect from this model. Still has the great Zeiss smell though!
Usable with Spectacles =No
Bali is one of the few places on earth made visually stunning by its main economic activity. In no other locale of the island does this hold truer than in the Tabanan District of west Bali where the cascading rice terraces of Jatiluwih are the most striking feature of the agricultural landscape, claiming even slopes that look too formidable to be of any possible use.
Along with majestic Pekerisan River in Gianyar and the stately Taman Ayun Temple in Mengwi, Jatiluwih has been chosen as a new nominee as a World Heritage site. It’s a great honor for Bali to have its natural and cultural wonders included, as the sites will take their place right along side world-famous Borobudur, Prambanan, the Sangiran archaeological site, Ujung Kulon, Lorentz and Komodo national parks, and the tropical rainforests of Sumatra.
The achingly picturesque area of Jatiluwih actually comprises not only rice fields but also forests, lakes, springs, temples and a huge natural mountain reserve scattered over a wide area around the slopes Mount Batukaru, a sacred landscape whose boundaries are defined by a cluster of temples supported by traditional villages and farmlands administered by age-old subak organizations, the local water boards.
This site is among the most striking examples of terraced agriculture in the world and is arguably Bali’s oldest and most complex real-life model of the subak agricultural system which vividly reflects the intertwined, mutually beneficial relationship between the island’s traditional rice growing culture and its Bali Hindu spiritual belief system.
Bali’s terracing and irrigation practices are even more elaborate, sophisticated, and seasonably predictable than those on Java. Though beautiful rice field terraces also can also be found in Sumatra and Sulawesi, there is no irrigation organization in Indonesia comparable to Bali’s water conservation and distribution system. Only the 2000-year-old Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippines can hold a candle to Jatiluwih.
As it exemplifies such effective water usage over centuries, Bali’s famed environmentally friendly subak system itself is being considered for the World Heritage list. The effort to get the subak system listed to World Heritage status is especially urgent in the face of widespread diversion of agricultural lands. Over the past 20 years Bali lost more than 1,500 ha of precious rice fields to make way for the development of tourist resorts, restaurants, housing complexes, road construction and other commercial enterprises.
The Realm of Dewi Sri
Jatiluwih is one big sculpture. Because of the Tabanan area’s superb drainage pattern, the high volcanic ash content, and the island’s equable climate, conditions for traditional sawah cultivation exemplified by Jatiluwih’s terraces are perhaps the most ideal in all of Bali.
Rice growing is practiced as both an art and a science. Bali’s steep and narrow ravines, as typified especially in the western part of Jatiluwih, are not easy to dam. To remedy this problem, the area’s farmers have devised an ingenious system of hand-built aqueducts, small catchments, and underground canals to collect rainwater from Bali’s mountain lakes, spilling each farmer’s precious allotment of water onto tiers of paddy via thousands of tiny waterfalls.
Jatiluwih’s rice fields are irrigated by water that is sometimes channeled by tunnels through solid rock hillsides. Water needs high on the ridges often require tunnels two or three kilometers long. This complex irrigation system, continuously maintained, groomed, and plowed, has been developed over many centuries. The historical manuscript, the Bebetin, records that Balinese farmers have used the Subak system since at least 1071.
Some scholars have postulated that it is due to the expertise of Bali’s rice farmers that the Balinese have been able to support such a refined civilization with such a theatrical and colorful religion. The discipline required to share water and resources has created a remarkably cooperative way of life. Rugged individualists cannot exist in communities where every farmer is utterly dependent on the cooperation of his neighbors.
The word for rice (nasi), a staple of the Balinese diet, is the same word for “meal”. A Balinese cannot imagine a meal without rice. Specialized vocabularies deal with every aspect of rice farming, and a huge amount of time, energy, and money go into petitioning the gods so the rice farmer’s work may yield good results. Popping up everywhere in Jatiluwih’s rice terraces you see small temples dedicated to Dewi Sri, the beloved goddess of rice.
The whole concept of visually updating cars on a yearly basis has always seemed a bit extravagant to many people outside of the U.S. Whereas our cars could look pretty much the same year on year before finally being replaced in America sheet metal changes were often done after 12 months in a continuous effort to get people to buy the latest seasons vehicle.
One one hand you could say it got potential buyers to continually seek out your latest products and on the other it would bring about the term "built in obsolescence" making a pretty new purchase seem old hat! It must have caused a nightmare with model makers even now but I guess also a goldmine of potential for maximising a certain casting with only minimal changes.
This is the second Auto World Buick Estate Wagon Santa brought me this Christmas yet being a 1975 example and not a 1974 means its front panel and grille have been altered accordingly. Everything else looks pretty much the same meaning a true 1/64 scale Station Wagon laden with lashings of chrome and gaudy fake wood appliqué. I absolutely love this type of model and Auto World seem to be very good at making them! Mint and boxed.
I don't typically buy anything from the Revoltech series, mostly likely because the licenses that they play with aren't usually my thing. However, once in a while, an interesting figure pops up.
For the last little while, one of the more visually impressive sublines from the Revoltech is the Figure Complex: Amazing Yamaguchi line featuring various beloved X-Men characters sculpted by Yamaguchi Katsuhisa. I know a Wolverine and Magneto were released, and a Gambit will be released. I also believe the line has moved onto at least non-X characters with the recently solicited Iron Man.
Obviously, this figure is none of those - this is Psylocke.
For someone that likes figures and toys, it's surprising how few comics I've read. My introduction to the character was from the original Capcom Vs. Game, X-Men: Children of the Atom in all her uninhibited bouncy glory.
The character naturally has a long and storied past that I'd probably lose much sleep over if I actually tried to research. I believe that "too long, didn't read" version of it is that she is a mutant (duh) named Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock, the sister of Captain Marvel. Through a series of events such as self sacrifice and transference of mental capacities, she ends up in a body of an Japanese woman who is the brain dead wife of the leader of the Hand, an assassin clan, and is brainwashed into become one of them. She develops Psionic powers (ability to form things out of mental energy, mostly for her being blades), and eventually breaks free of this brainwashing, and that, friends is the genesis of the X-Men character Psylocke.
None of that matters, of course. I bought the figure because the previews made her look really, really, good, and Psylocke herself being a very sharp character design with long flowing purple hair and her purple kind-of-there outfit. While it's been out for probably 6 months now, I only recently got mine because I insist that the guy who sold it to me bring it to me personally... even if I had to wait six months.
If you've never watched gameplay of Psylocke, just think slinky female ninja dressed in purple capable of making various energy things. And, as mentioned, the prototype pictures show cased that very well. So, how did it do?
Well, let's start from the top.
Psylocke comes with the figure, two face plates (one neutral, one smiling), a sheathed katana, an empty sheath, twin katanas, twin energy katanas, twin Psyblades, 4 sets of hands, a detachable sash, and a dynamic stand with both a peg connector, along with a clamp that I guess would give you a bit more height with your aerial stuff but I never actually used it. I personally would have like an additional angry/attacking face plate because as it is, she's a bit too serene looking.
Also kind of neat is that on the cardboard insert (and side flaps of the box) are full colour prints of I guess what comic art inspired this particular design.
The Revoltech joint system is a bit different from the Figma and Figuart systems.. at least I guess they are, and at the very least this one is.
Articulation is very, very, very good. I cannot emphasize how much you can get this figure to do despite it's small size. The trade off is that some of the joints look really weird when not positioned properly, specifically the shoulders and knees, which are double or triple joints depending on which one we're talking about. Whomever designed the tray for holding Psylocke really didn't do the figure any favours to say the least. However, the amount of knee bend and chest press that this figure more than overshadows this first impression issue, and that range or movement is something you want for a figure like Psylocke.
In addition to the aforementioned, all your standard points of articulation are present. Bonus ones include a toe swivel, articulation for her sash, thigh swivel, independent neck and head articulation, and hair that can be lifted to all for greater neck movement, with the latter head/neck related items allowing for some great crouching poses.
Sadly, while her shoulders worked out just fine despite their wonky appearance, her ass suffers from the dreaded "thigh separation" scenario where the movement of the legs creates an unsightly gap where the thigh meets the back of the body, particularly notable given that she doesn't wear pants. But, again, at least the trade off is great articulation.
Psylocke I guess would technically be the action figure (or at least middle of the pack Japanese figure) equivalent of a Butterface release. To be fair, it is generally what was promised on the box, so I don't really have anyone to blame but myself for buying her if this was the key aspect that ruins the experience for me. Both the prototype and the final item feature the same round almost featureless face with the undersized nose.
No it's other things that serve not only as a topic of discussion, but also kind of give you a feeling as to why Figma and Figuarts are kind of priced the way they are.
Psylocke has an MSRP of about 6,000 Yen, which is about the price of your run of the mill Figuart, with Figma coming in closer to what.. 7,000 if not more these days? The releases are about the same size, but lets remember that Figuarts have no stand and very few accessories, and clearly Psylocke destroys any run of the mill Figuart figure in terms of value.
Part of the pricing on everything is of course the cut paid for the actual license, but it's not like a Marvel license is particularly cheap. So what else is there?
It pretty much comes down to paint.
If you look closely, you'll probably notice that Psylocke has no paint whatsoever on her fleshy bits. Not only does this look a bit meh, but it makes photographing her a major pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to bring out details.. like her nose and eye sockets. You'll notice that the paint masking on her leg bands isn't bad, but there are more weak spots than on its Figma and Figuarts competitors, especially if we're talking about figure with a relatively simple colour scheme. Some minor paint issues were also spotted on her neck piece, but those are primarily paint transfers. There were also some areas with paint overspray, but it wasn't anything bootleg bad, just something worth noting.
Her translucent purple hair is also a big seller for this figure. The overall final product is pretty good, but if you look closely (and in the instance of the back of her head, not even that close), you'll notice some very rough spots that I don't know were a QC issue or a design flaw. By comparison, nothing this was spotted on either KOS-MOS or T-ELOS, both of which are at least 7 years older than Psylocke.
For what it is worth, her effect parts are very well done, particularly her Psiblades with the gradient from cold to warm Purple. The quality of the stand itself is, from my analysis, more solid than a Figma stand, mostly due to a combination of better plastic, a thicker arm, and better designed joints. There were also no issues with regards to rough plastic finishes other than the aformentioned hair problems.
One other issue that I read about was the face plate itself. Some owners seem to be indicating that due to the way the face is mounted on the head (friction based, one slot, straight above the face) the figure arrived with the socket on the hair already worn out and wouldn't hold the face in place, or would be in danger of doing so in the future. I didn't have that issue on mine, but I do understand where they're coming from with these statements.
I should probably also mention the eyes. Those who are familiar with the Hot Toys world will know the term PERS, which is their fancy term for eyes that can be moved on the sculpts to facilitate an even greater amount of posing. Amazingly this figure also features eyeballs that can be moved, though it's not as complicated as the PERS system. This is actually pretty neat given the size of the eyeballs, though you might want to ditch the included white pick in favour of a tiny screw driver or something to move the eyes as I believe the 90 degree bend actually makes it harder to manipulate the eyes into the right direction.
In the end, a very good release, and probably the best Psylocke action figure I've ever seen.. of course, the only others I have seen are the Marvel Legends one which again, aren't bad given the price. Those looking for a more legit comic sculpt need not apply here, naturally.
But there is no doubt that this is a sharp looking figure, and for the price it comes with quite a few goodies. It just lacks that final bit of spit polish that would push it from being very good to being outstanding. Still, if you like your ninjas purple and slinky, you can't go wrong.
Never let who you are limit what you can do. I honestly believe that anyone can accomplish anything in life if they have the will to do it.
Pictured are two runners seen at the Ma On Shan Promenade after they have finished their run and are walking home. One of the men is visually impaired. But he is able to run outside with the help of a guide runner. A cotton rope binds their hands together, thus allowing the visually impaired athlete to be able to run out in open air.
I have never seen anything like this before. Hong Kong is awesome. And very accessible. Crazyisgood. SML Love.
# SML Data
+ Date: 2013-02-08 11:20:37 GMT+0800
+ Dimensions: 3196 x 4794
+ Exposure 1/200 sec at f/5.6
+ Focal Length: 102 mm
+ ISO: 640
+ Flash: Did not fire
+ Camera: Canon EOS 7D
+ Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + Canon EF 1.4x Extender III
+ GPS: 22°25'14" N 114°13'27" E
+ 中國香港馬鞍山海濱長廊 中国香港马鞍山海滨长廊 Ma On Shan Promenade, Hong Kong, China
+ Serial: SML.20130208.7D.21490
+ Workflow: Lightroom 4
+ Series: Crazyisgood
“領跑員 Guide Runner + 視障運動員 Visually Impaired Athlete” / Crazyisgood / SML.20130208.7D.21490
/ #Crazyisgood #CCBY #SMLPhotography #SMLUniverse #SMLMen #SMLProjects
/ #中國 #中国 #China #香港 #HongKong #馬鞍山 #MaOnShan #人 #people #男 #Men #街 #Street #攝影 #摄影 #photography #run #體育 #体育 #運動 #运动 #sports
37 – William E & Mary W Sawtelle Residence. 2082 S Harvard Blvd. 1907. Sumner P Hunt and Arthur Wesley Eager.
When architectural historians hear of a house designed by Hunt & Eager visually what comes to mind is what was known then as the “Elizabethan” style. Today we call it Tudor. But here is an anomaly in their repertoire. For the Sawtelle family, Hunt and Eager designed a mansion in a Prairie style with Mission Revival touches. The effect is striking and rare. Wm Sawtelle was a wealthy banker and landholder who donated the land for the Sawtelle Solder’s Home, and for whom the former city of Sawtelle was named, as well as a major street of his named.
West Adams Heights
“Nowadays we scarcely notice the high stone gates which mark the entrances on Hobart, Harvard, and Oxford streets, south of Washington Boulevard. For one thing, the traffic is too heavy, too swift; and then, again, the gates have been obscured by intrusions of shops and stores. At the base of the stone pillars appears the inscription “West Adams Heights.” There was a time when these entranceways were formidable and haughty, for they marked the ways to one of the first elite residential areas in Los Angeles. . . In the unplanned early-day chaos of Los Angeles, West Adams Heights was obviously something very special, an island in an ocean of bungalows—approachable, but withdrawn and reclusive—one of the few surviving examples of planned urban elegance of the turn of the century.”
- Carey McWilliams, “The Evolution of Sugar Hill,” Script, March, 1949: 30.
Today West Adams Heights is still obviously something special. The past sixty years, however, have not been kind. In 1963 the Santa Monica Freeway cut through the heart of West Adams Heights, dividing the neighborhood, obscuring its continuity. In the 1970’s the city paved over the red brick streets and removed the ornate street lighting. After the neighborhood’s zoning was changed to a higher density, overzealous developers claimed several mansions for apartment buildings. Despite these challenges, however, “The Heights,” as the area was once known, has managed to regain some of its former elegance.
The West Adams Heights tract was laid out in 1902, in what was then a wheat field on the western edge of town. Although the freeway now creates an artificial barrier, the original neighborhood boundaries were Adams Boulevard, La Salle Ave, Washington Boulevard, and Western Avenue. Costly improvements were integrated into the development, such as 75-food wide boulevards (which were some of the first contoured streets not to follow the city grid), lots elevated from the sidewalk, ornate street lighting, and large granite monuments with red-brass electroliers at the entrance to every street. These upgrades increased the lot values, which helped ensure the tract would be an enclave for the elite.
One early real estate ad characterized the neighborhood stating: “West Adams Heights needs no introduction to the public: it is already recognized as being far superior to any other tract. Its high and slightly location, its beautiful view of the city and mountains make t a property unequaled by any other in the city.”
The early residents’ were required to sign a detailed restrictive covenant. This hand-written document required property owners to build a “first-class residence,” of at least two stories, costing no less than two-thousand dollars (at a time when a respectable home could be built for a quarter of that amount, including the land), and built no less than thirty-five feet from the property’s primary boundary. Common in early twentieth century, another clause excluded residents from selling or leasing their properties to non-Caucasians.
By the mid 1930’s, however, most of the restrictions had expired. Between 1938 and 1945 many prominent African-Americans began to make “The Heights” their home. According to Carey McWilliams, West Adams Heights became known “Far and wide as the famous Sugar Hill section of Los Angeles,” and enjoyed a clear preeminence over Washington’s smart Le Droit Park, St. Louis’s Enright Street, West Philadelphia, Chicago’s Westchester, and Harlem’s fabulous Sugar Hill.
West Adams Heights, now also known as Sugar Hill, played a major role in the Civil Rights movement in Los Angeles. In 1938 Norman Houston, president of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, and an African-American, purchased a home at 2211 South Hobart Boulevard. Legal Action from eight homeowners quickly ensued. During that period, other prominent African-Americans began to make Sugar Hill their home – including actress Hattie McDaniels, dentists John and Vada Summerville, actress Louise Beavers, band leader Johnny Otis, and performers Pearl Baily and Ethel Waters, and many more. On December 6, 1945, the “Sugar Hill Cases” were heard before Judge Thurmond Clark, in LA Superior Court. He made history by become the first judge in America to use the 14th Amendment to disallow the enforcement of covenant race restrictions. The Los Angeles Sentinel quoted Judge Clark: “This court is of the opinion that it is time that [African-Americans] are accorded, without reservations and evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment.” Gradually, over the last century people of nearly ever background have made historic West Adams their home.
The northern end of West Adams Heights is now protected as part of the Harvard Heights Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ). The Historic West Adams area of Los Angeles (which includes West Adams Heights) boasts the highest concentration of turn-of-the-century homes west of the Mississippi, as well as the highest concentration of National Historic Landmarks, National Register of Historic Places, National Historic Districts, State Historic Landmarks, Los Angeles Cultural-Historic Monuments, and Historic Preservation Overlay Zones in the city. The entirety of West Adams Heights should be nominated as a National Register Historic District, for the quality of homes, the prominence of the architects, notoriety of the people who lived in the neighborhood, and the role it played in civil rights.
Perhaps a quote adapted from a fireplace mantle in the Frederick Rindge mansion best symbolizes the optimism which exists in West Adams: “California Shall be Ours as Long as the Stars Remain.”
Knocknarea mountain (Cnoc na Rí in Irish) is situated to the west of Sligo town in County Sligo in Ireland, overlooking the village of Strandhill
The 327 metre (1014 ft) high limestone mountain is visually striking, as it is monolithic in appearance and stands in a prominent position on the Cúil Irra peninsula between the bays of Sligo and Ballysadare. In addition, a large mound, or cairn of loose limestone rocks – ‘Miosgán Meadhbha’ (Maeve’s Lump of Butter), caps the mountain. This is visible in the picture as small bump on the top of the mountain. Although this monument has not been excavated, its shape and structure and the results of archaeology in the immediate area have led to the tomb being classified as a Neolithic passage tomb. There are a number of similar features in the area (Carrowmore, Cairns Hill) which have been classified as passage tombs.
Queen Maeve's cairn measures some 55 meters across and 10 meters high, making it the largest such tomb in Ireland outside the Boyne Valley. It is estimated that the stones used in the construction would weigh approx. 40,000 metric tons.
Medb or Maeve was the warrior Queen of Connacht in Celtic mythology. The story of part of her reign is recorded in the ‘Táin Bó Cúailnge’ (The cattle raid of Cooley) - abbreviated ‘The Táin’ - the earliest written version of which is recorded in Lebor na hUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow), a late 11th century manuscript. The Táin saga itself is believed to be much older, perhaps referring to a time several hundred years B.C. Some commentators regard Queen Maeve as an Iron Age figure, but her existence has never been proven.. Maeve is reputedly entombed in the Knocknarea cairn in an erect position, in full battle regalia, facing northward toward her Ulster enemies. Although passage tombs are dated to the Neolithic era, there is evidence of the re-use of such tombs (including burials) in the Bronze and Iron Ages, which may provide some support to those who believe Queen Maeve is buried inside Miosgán Medbh.
Woodchurch is the latest bete noir of Kent churches for me. Or has been for some while. Along with Hinxhill, these two have proved to be impossible to get into. The lat time I tried here was last year's heritage weekend where I found the church locked just after five in the afternoon.
So, after a flurry of e mails this week, and the warden's surprise I have always failed to get in: "its open from seven in the morning to five every day". Maybe I just went on the three or four occasions this did not happen.
Whatever, this was the first stop of the day.
Woodchurch is on the route to Cranbrook and Sissinghurst, so this is the third week I have driven through Ham Street.
We park opposite the two pubs that sit beside each other, one, The Bonny Cravat looked fine with hanging baskets outside.
But too early for a pint, so we walk up the path to the porch and pushed....
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An enormous church with much of interest. The fabric dates from the thirteenth century, and the nave arcades of alternate round and octagonal piers are made of ragstone, which was polished in the nineteenth century to resemble Bethersden marble. In fact there are some genuine pieces of Bethersden marble in the church, particularly important visually being the shafts between the east window lancets. On the south-east buttress of the chancel is a mass dial, and on the main south wall is an excellent large sundial. The rood loft stairway survives in the north chapel where there is a good and rare double hagioscope. The sedilia are made up of three graduated thirteenth-century seats with a double piscina incorporated as part of the same scheme. In the south aisle is a medallion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, while the nearby east window depicting the Crucifixion is by Kempe. In front of the pulpit is the brass to a priest, Nicholas Gore (d. 1333), a quatrefoil with a circular inscription, into which is set the figure of Gore in his vestments. The Royal Arms are those of George III and were painted by a local artist, Joseph Gibson, in 1773.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Woodchurch
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WOODCHURCH
IS the next parish south-eastward from Halden, and is within the court of the bailiwic of the Seven Hundreds, which claims paramount over the denne of Ilchenden, being a great part of it; though the manors of Apledore and of Wye claim over some parts of it.
This PARISH, which stands rather on high ground, is about five miles in length from north to south, and three miles and an half in breadth. The soil of it is in general a stiff clay, though in the southern part of it there is some light land, inclining to sand. It is exceedingly covered, throughout most of it, with oaken coppice wood, and the face of the country here, as well as the roads, are much like those of Halden, last described. The village is near the centre of the parish, built mostly round a green, with the church on the north-west side of it, and the parsonage-house. In the south-west part of the parish is Shirley-house and farm, which formerly belonged to the family of Clarke, and afterwards to the Harlackendens, from whom it was purchased by Anne Blackmore, widow of John Blackmore, esq. of Tenterden, who died in 1717; and their grandson Thomas Blackmore, esq. of Hertfordshire, now owns it, with other adjoining estates in this parish. Below this farm southward is a large tract of marshes, called Shirley, or Sherles-moor, being about three miles in length and two in breadth, lying in Woodchurch, Apledore, Eboney, and Tenterden, containing 1245 acres, and is what is called the Upper Levels, the waters of which few through Scots-float into Rye harbour. It is allowed to be the richest land for satting cattle in all these levels. It belongs to several different proprietors, among whom Sir Edward Hales, bart. Thomas Blackmore, esq. the dean and chapter of Canterbury, Richard Curteis, and the heirs of William Henley, esqrs. are the most considerable.
Sir Edward Hales, bart. and Richard Hulse, esq. are lessees of the dean and chapter of Canterbury, for lands in this level, which formerly belonged to the priory of Christ-church there.
About three quarters of a mile northward from the church, is Redbrooke-street, at which formerly resided a family named At-hale, possessed of lands in this and the neighbouring parishes.
THE MANOR OF TOWNLAND, alias WOODCHURCH, is subordinate to that of Apledore, and was part of those lands and estates assigned for the desence of Dover-castle, to the constable of which it was allotted, and made a part of his barony, which was usually stiled from him, the Constabularie, being held by him of the king in capite by barony, by the service of maintaining a certain number of soldiers from time to time for the desence of the castle. Of him and his heirs this manor was held in capite by the service of ward to the castle, Ralph de la Thun held this manor and other lands in Woodchurch, by the above service, in the 43d year of Henry III. in which year he died possessed of it, and from him it acquired the name of Thunland, or Townland, as it was afterwards called. After him Richard de Tunland became possessed of it, whose grandson John Ate Towneland paid aid for it in the 20th year of Edward III. and in his descendants it continued down to Thomas Townland, who died possessed of it in the 7th year of Henry IV. (fn. 1) After which it passed by sale into the family of Norton, whence it was sold, about the beginning of king Henry VIII.'s reign, to the prior and convent of Leeds, who were then possessed of it, as appears by the receipt in the exchequer anno 8 of that reign, Mich. Rot. 35; and it remained part of their possessions till the dissolution of the priory, in the 31st year of that reign, when it came into the hands of the crown; from whence it was granted that year to Thomas, lord Cromwell, earl of Essex, on whose attainder next year, this manor, among the rest of his estates, became forfeited to the crown, where it staid but a small time, for the king, in his 36th year, granted it to Sir Thomas Moile, chancellor of his court of augmentation, who in the 4th year of Edward VI. alienated it to Thomas Ancos, who afterwards sold it to Thomas Lucas, gent, who died possessed of it in the 3d year of queen Elizabeth, hold ing it in capite by knight's service. He was descended from William Lucas, gent. of Ashford, who is recorded in Fuller's history, among those gentry who were returned as such, and qualified to bear arms, by the commissioners anno 12 Henry VI. (fn. 2) By the inquisition taken after his death, it was found, that Thomas Godfrey was his nephew and next heir. He died in the 7th year of that reign, and was succeeded by his brother James Godfrey, who two years afterwards alienated it to Mary, the widow of Sir John Guldeford, of Hemsted, who in the 19th year of that reign sold it to John Shellie, whose son John Shelley, esq. of Michelgrove, was created a baronet in 1611; and in his descendants, baronets, this manor continued till the reign of Charles II. How long it continued in this name, I do not find; for it was now become but of very little note. At length, after some intermediate owners, it became the property of Mr. Gabriel Richards, and since his decease of Mr. William Evans, the present possessor, who resides in it.
THE PLACE-HOUSE, or Woodchurch house, is a seat situated at a small distance eastward from the church, and was the habitation of a family who took both their surname and original from it. Anchitel de Woodchurch was possessed of it about the time of the Conqueror, and gave for his arms, Gules, three swords, erected in pale, argent. His grandson Roger de Woodchurch, is the first that is mentioned in the antient deeds, without date, of this estate, and his grandson Sir Simon de Woodchurch, is in the register of those Kentish gentlemen who accompanied king Edward I. in his victorious expedition into Scotland, where he was knighted, with many others of his countrymen. But in him the name, though not the male line, determined; for by matching with Susan, daughter and heir of Henry le Clerk, of Munsidde, in the parish of Kingsnoth, who brought a large inheritance into his family; his successors, out of gratitude to those who had added so much splendour, and annexed so plentiful a revenue to their name, altered their paternal appellation from Woodchurch to Clerke; and in several of their deeds subsequent to this match were written, Clerke, alias Woodchurch. He left two sons, Simon, who died without male issue; (fn. 3) and Clerke Woodchurch, heir to his mother's lands, as well as to his elder brother at this place, on his failure of male issue; which latter left a son Peter Clerke, alias Woodchurch, who inherited this seat on his father's death, and in his descendants it continued down to Humphry Clarke, for so they then wrote their name, who resided at Buckford, in Great Chart. He sold this seat, with the estate belonging to it, to Martin Harlackenden, esq. of this parish, whose successor Walter Harlackenden resided here in the reign of James I. and his descendant Geo. Harlackenden, esq. of Woodchurch, sold it to Winifred Bridger, widow, and Laurence her son, the latter of whom at his death devised it to his son John, who dying s.p. his sister Mrs. Winifrid Bridger, of Canterbury, succeeded to it, and dying in 1776, unmarried, by will gave it to the Rev. William Dejovas Byrch, of Canterbury, and Elizabeth his wife. He died in 1792, and she in 1798, having surviving issue an only daughter Elizabeth, since deceased, who married Samuel Egerton Brydges, esq. of Denton, who is now in his late wife's right became entitled to it.
Great part of this house has been pulled down, and the remainder of it makes but a very mean appearance, and is inhabited by several different persons.
HENDEN is an estate in this parish, which from having had for a length of time the same owners as that last-described, was once almost accounted an ap pendage to it. This place is supposed (for there are no records existing of it) to have been the original seat of the Hendens, who were in much later times seated at Biddenden-place, in this neighbourhood, as has been mentioned before, where they continued till within these few years. How long they remained possessors of it, cannot therefore be traced; but in the reign of king Richard II. the Capells, of Capellscourt, in Ivychurch, were become owners of it; in the 15th year of which reign Richard Capell died possessed of it. At length, after it had continued in his descendants for some generations, it went by the marriage of a female heir into the family of Harlackenden, of this parish, where it remained till Deborah, daughter and heir of Martin Harlackenden, entitled her husband Sir Edward Hales, knight and baronet, to the possession of this estate, together with others in this parish and neighbourhood, and in his descendants it has continued down to Sir Edward Hales, bart. of St. Stephen's, the present owner of it.
HARLACKENDEN, usually called Old Harlackenden, situated within the boroughof that name which extended likewise over part of the adjoining parish of Shadoxhurst) was for some hundred years the patrimonial demesnes of that name and family, as appeared by a tomb in this church, the inscription on which, long since obliterated, shewed that one of them lay interred there soon after the conquest. Philipott says, the proportion and shape of the characters were much like those in use in the reigns of king Henry IV. and V. which he thinks was occasioned by this tomb having been renewed by one of this person's successors and descendants in one of the above reigns, and the former one might have been in old characters, suitable to the time in which it was first erected. There are none now remaining on it. Kilburne says, it was for William Harlackenden, anno 1081. They bore for their arms, Azure, a sess, ermine, between three lions beads erased, or; which arms were painted in an upper window of Grays-Inn hall, and appeared to have been of long standing there. In his descendants, residents here, many of whom lie buried in this church, this seat continued down to Thomas Harlackenden, esq. of Woodchurch, who procured his lands to be disgavelled by the acts of 31 Henry VIII. and 2 and 3 Edward VI. He died in 1558. (fn. 4) At length his descendant George Harlackenden, esq. of this place, alienated it to Winifried Bridger, widow, and Laurence her son, whose heirs, in the 9th year of queen Anne, procured an act to vest it in trustees, and they accordingly sold it, in 1711, to dame Sarah, widow of Sir Paul Barrett, sergeant-at-law. She died that same year, and by the limitation in her will, (fn. 5) this estate devolved to her grandson Sir Francis Head, bart. son of her first husband Francis Head, esq. who died possessed of it in 1768. After which his widow, lady Head, by virtue of her jointure, came into the possession of it. She died in 1792, and it then devolved to the daughters and coheirs of her late husband Sir Francis Head, and to their heirs, in the like proportions as the Hermitage, in Higham, and his other estates in this county, in which state it remains at present. (fn. 6)
HENHURST is an estate in the north-east part of this parish, which formerly belonged to a family of the same name, whose more antient seat was at Henhurst, in Staplehurst, of which this was but a younger branch. They were likewise often written in old deeds both Henhurst and Enghurst, and continued owners of this place until the reign of king Henry VII. and then Sir Thomas Henghurst dying without issue male, his daughter and sole heir carried it in marriage to Humphry Wife, whose daughter and heir Agnes entitled her husband Mr. Robert Master to the possession of it, who bore for his arms, A lion, rampant, holding in his paws an escallop shell. His son Mr. Thomas Master resided here, but his son Giles Master quitted this residence and removed to Canterbury, where he died in 1644. At length it descended to Sir Harcourt Master, alderman of London, who became possessed of it for the term of his life, by the will of his father's eldest brother's daughter, Mary Master. He died in 1648. Since which it has continued in his descendants, one of whom, Harcourt Masters, esq. of Greenwich, owns it at this time.
HENGHAM, now usually called Great Hengham, corruptly for Engeham, its original name, lies enveloped by woods, about a mile and an half northward from Woodchurch. It was once accounted a manor, and was in early times possessed by a family of the same name, who resided at it, and were stiled sometimes Engham, alias Edingham, in antient deeds, relating to their possessions in different parts of Romney marsh, the latter being probably their original name, and the former one an abbreviation of it. (fn. 7) Alanus de Engham resided here in the reign of king John, and married the daughter of Townland, of this parish, as did his descendant Moses de Engham, alias Edingham, who by marriage with Petronell, daughter of Alan de Plurenden, greatly increased his estate in Woodchurch; and probably of kindred to this family was Odomar Hengham, esq. who died in 1411, and lies buried in the body of Canterbury cathedral. They bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, sable, between three pellets; on a chief, gules, a lion passant, guardant, or. A branch of this family became possessed of Singleton, in Great Chart, where they rebuilt the mansion, and afterwards resided; but the last residence of the Enghams, in this county, was at Gunston, where they flourished till the beginning of this century. At length Robert Engham, of Woodchurch, leaving two daughters his coheirs, this manor, about the latter end of the reign of Henry VIII. was carried in marriage by Mary, the eldest of them, to Thomas Isley, who leaving five daughters his coheirs, Mary, married to Francis Spelman; Frances, to William Boys, esq. Elizabeth, to Anthony Mason, esq. Anne, to George Delves, esq. and Jane, to Francis Haut, esq. they, in right of their respective wives, became jointly entitled to it. This occasioned a partition of this estate, which was afterwards called by the name of Great and Little Hengham; the former having the antient mansion and manor annexed to it. This part was afterwards alienated to William Hales, esq. of Nackington, who possessed it in the reign of king James I. and in 1640, passed it away by sale to Thomas Godfrey the younger, esq. of Lid, who conveyed it to Clerke, whence it was sold in the reign of king Charles II. to John Grove, gent. of Tunstall, whose descendant Richard Grove, esq. of London, who died unmarried in 1792, by will devised it to Mr. William Jemmott and Mr. William Marshall, the former of whom, on a partition of his estates, became the sole proprietor of it, and continues so at this time. A court baron is held for this manor.
THE OTHER PART of this manor, now called Little Hengham, which lies adjoining to it southward, is now the property of the heirs of Abbot, the Whitfields, and the Combers.
PLERYNDEN, now corruptly called Plunden, is situated in the north-west part of this parish, in the midst of a wood, and in the denne of the same name. It had in early times owners, who took their furname from it and continued so till Petronell, daughter and heir of Alan de Plerynden, who bore for his arms, Perchevron, in chief, two mullets, in base, a martlet, as they appear, carved in stone, on the roof of Canterbury cloysters, carried it in marriage to Moses de Engham, in whose descendants it remained till Vincent Engham, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, passed it away by sale to William Twysden, esq. of Chelmington, whose descendant Sir Thomas Twysden, bart. of Roydon-hall, in East Peckham, about the beginning of queen Anne's reign, sold it to Mr. John Hooker, of Maidstone, who died possessed of it in 1717, and devised it to his second son John, of Broadoak, in Brenchley, gent. who dying unmarried in 1762, devised it to his youngest and only surviving brother Stephen Hooker, gent. of Halden, and he alienated it to John Children, esq. of Tunbridge, whose son George Children, esq. of that place, is the present owner of it.
Charities.
RICHARD BROWNE, late of Woodchurch, by will in 1562, gave to the poor of this parish a rent charge of 4l. 10s. per annum, on every Trinity Sunday for ever, out of a messuage called Webbes, in this parish, of the clear annual produce of 3l. 8s.
SIR EDWARD HALES, of Woodchurch, by deed in 1610, gave to the poor yearly rents out of a farm, called the Legg farm, in Kenardington.
PHEBE GOBLE, of Woodchurch, by will in 1692, gave to the poor 2l. per annum, to be paid by her heirs for ever, out of a farm, called the Bonny Cravat, in Woodchurch, (now an alehouse) the first Sunday after Old Lady-day.
THERE IS A SCHOOL, for reading and writing, supported by contribution, in this parish.
The poor constantly relieved are about ninety, casually 45.
WOODCHURCH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the dioceseof Canterbury, and deanry of Limne.
¶The church, which is dedicated to All Saints, is large and handsome, consisting of three isles and three chancels, with a spire steeple, shingled, at the west end, in which hang six bells. The windows in the high chancel are small and elegant. There are some very small remains of good painted glass. In this chancel is a stone, with the figure in brass, of a priest praying, and inscription for master Nicholas de Gore, in old French; and another stone, with inscription in brass, for William Benge Capellanus, obt. 1437. In this church are many tombs and gravestones of the family of Harlackenden, which have already been mentioned before. In the south chancel there is a handsome tomb, of Bethersden marble, for Sir Edward Waterhous, chancellor of the exchequer, and privy counsellor to queen Elizabeth, in Ireland, third son of John Waterhous, esq. of Whitechurch, in Buckinghamshire, obt. s. p. 1591, his arms on his tomb, Or, a pile engrailed, sable, quartered with other coats. Kilburne says, in the east window of this chancel, were the arms of Ellis; and in the east window of the north chancel, were several essigies of the Clerkes; and in the north window of it, those of William Harey; all long since gone. The sont in this church seems very antient, being of Bethersden marble, square, and standing on four pillars.
This church was part of the antient possessions of the see of Canterbury, and continues so at this time, his grace the archbishop being the present patron of it.
It is a rectory, valued in the king's books at 26l.13s. 4d. and the yearly tenths at 2l. 13s. 4d. In 1640 it was valued at one hundred and ten pounds. Communicants three hundred and forty-nine. In 1729 at two hundred and thirty pounds per annum.
Among the Lambeth MSS. is a decree of archbishop Peckham, concerning the tithes of Woodchurch, anno 1281. (fn. 8) There are about two acres of glebe land.
Israel’s security barrier is meant to protect Israeli civilians against Palestinian terrorism. The imagery of this cartoon amounts to a blood libel on a day when the millions of victims of the Holocaust are remembered. Image created for HonestReporting.com on January 28, 2013. Please credit as "CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com" (without quote marks) and link back to this page for attribution. Original image featured in related article: Cementing Hate on Holocaust Memorial Day. Brief blog post on the creation of HR's graphic above: HR Behind the Scenes: Addressing the Sunday Times Visually. Follow-up stories and other coverage: Sunday Times in Damage Control Over Offensive Cartoon and Rupert Murdoch Apologizes For “Grotesque, Offensive Cartoon”.
Some time ago, I posted an image of my own adaptation of a Rubik's cube into a tactile cube for the blind.
Well, today I got this brand new Rubik's Cube. It's a cube that is intended for the blind and visually impaired, but can be solved by the sighted, too. It's got its usual coloured tiles with the addition of the 3D shapes on them, so it can be solved visually or just by touch. It's absolutely fantastic! And what I like most about it is that this cube can connect blind and sighted people in a fun activity!
Keep the comments clean! No banners, awards or invitations, please!
Visually parsing the more complex motion that will result from the easeInBounce above will likely require more time than the more simplistic easeInQuad curve. (Both these curves and their associated code can be found on easings.net.)
Designing Interface Animation: Meaningful Motion for User Experience, Head, Val, 2016. New York: Rosenfeld Media rosenfeldmedia.com/books/designing-interface-animation
Like many artist, I experience much of my life very visually. This is particularly true of music. I am a huge fan of Celtic/Folk music and a massive fan of the amazing Kate Rusby. One of my favorite Rusby songs is "Bring Me A Boat" and I have always seen, in my mind, this image of a woman standing on a dock looking out into the distance across the water. This image by no means captures the sadness of Rusby's lyrics or performance - but I had to try - and will make other attempts.
37 – William E & Mary W Sawtelle Residence. 2082 S Harvard Blvd. 1907. Sumner P Hunt and Arthur Wesley Eager.
When architectural historians hear of a house designed by Hunt & Eager visually what comes to mind is what was known then as the “Elizabethan” style. Today we call it Tudor. But here is an anomaly in their repertoire. For the Sawtelle family, Hunt and Eager designed a mansion in a Prairie style with Mission Revival touches. The effect is striking and rare. Wm Sawtelle was a wealthy banker and landholder who donated the land for the Sawtelle Solder’s Home, and for whom the former city of Sawtelle was named, as well as a major street of his named.
West Adams Heights
“Nowadays we scarcely notice the high stone gates which mark the entrances on Hobart, Harvard, and Oxford streets, south of Washington Boulevard. For one thing, the traffic is too heavy, too swift; and then, again, the gates have been obscured by intrusions of shops and stores. At the base of the stone pillars appears the inscription “West Adams Heights.” There was a time when these entranceways were formidable and haughty, for they marked the ways to one of the first elite residential areas in Los Angeles. . . In the unplanned early-day chaos of Los Angeles, West Adams Heights was obviously something very special, an island in an ocean of bungalows—approachable, but withdrawn and reclusive—one of the few surviving examples of planned urban elegance of the turn of the century.”
- Carey McWilliams, “The Evolution of Sugar Hill,” Script, March, 1949: 30.
Today West Adams Heights is still obviously something special. The past sixty years, however, have not been kind. In 1963 the Santa Monica Freeway cut through the heart of West Adams Heights, dividing the neighborhood, obscuring its continuity. In the 1970’s the city paved over the red brick streets and removed the ornate street lighting. After the neighborhood’s zoning was changed to a higher density, overzealous developers claimed several mansions for apartment buildings. Despite these challenges, however, “The Heights,” as the area was once known, has managed to regain some of its former elegance.
The West Adams Heights tract was laid out in 1902, in what was then a wheat field on the western edge of town. Although the freeway now creates an artificial barrier, the original neighborhood boundaries were Adams Boulevard, La Salle Ave, Washington Boulevard, and Western Avenue. Costly improvements were integrated into the development, such as 75-food wide boulevards (which were some of the first contoured streets not to follow the city grid), lots elevated from the sidewalk, ornate street lighting, and large granite monuments with red-brass electroliers at the entrance to every street. These upgrades increased the lot values, which helped ensure the tract would be an enclave for the elite.
One early real estate ad characterized the neighborhood stating: “West Adams Heights needs no introduction to the public: it is already recognized as being far superior to any other tract. Its high and slightly location, its beautiful view of the city and mountains make t a property unequaled by any other in the city.”
The early residents’ were required to sign a detailed restrictive covenant. This hand-written document required property owners to build a “first-class residence,” of at least two stories, costing no less than two-thousand dollars (at a time when a respectable home could be built for a quarter of that amount, including the land), and built no less than thirty-five feet from the property’s primary boundary. Common in early twentieth century, another clause excluded residents from selling or leasing their properties to non-Caucasians.
By the mid 1930’s, however, most of the restrictions had expired. Between 1938 and 1945 many prominent African-Americans began to make “The Heights” their home. According to Carey McWilliams, West Adams Heights became known “Far and wide as the famous Sugar Hill section of Los Angeles,” and enjoyed a clear preeminence over Washington’s smart Le Droit Park, St. Louis’s Enright Street, West Philadelphia, Chicago’s Westchester, and Harlem’s fabulous Sugar Hill.
West Adams Heights, now also known as Sugar Hill, played a major role in the Civil Rights movement in Los Angeles. In 1938 Norman Houston, president of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, and an African-American, purchased a home at 2211 South Hobart Boulevard. Legal Action from eight homeowners quickly ensued. During that period, other prominent African-Americans began to make Sugar Hill their home – including actress Hattie McDaniels, dentists John and Vada Summerville, actress Louise Beavers, band leader Johnny Otis, and performers Pearl Baily and Ethel Waters, and many more. On December 6, 1945, the “Sugar Hill Cases” were heard before Judge Thurmond Clark, in LA Superior Court. He made history by become the first judge in America to use the 14th Amendment to disallow the enforcement of covenant race restrictions. The Los Angeles Sentinel quoted Judge Clark: “This court is of the opinion that it is time that [African-Americans] are accorded, without reservations and evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment.” Gradually, over the last century people of nearly ever background have made historic West Adams their home.
The northern end of West Adams Heights is now protected as part of the Harvard Heights Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ). The Historic West Adams area of Los Angeles (which includes West Adams Heights) boasts the highest concentration of turn-of-the-century homes west of the Mississippi, as well as the highest concentration of National Historic Landmarks, National Register of Historic Places, National Historic Districts, State Historic Landmarks, Los Angeles Cultural-Historic Monuments, and Historic Preservation Overlay Zones in the city. The entirety of West Adams Heights should be nominated as a National Register Historic District, for the quality of homes, the prominence of the architects, notoriety of the people who lived in the neighborhood, and the role it played in civil rights.
Perhaps a quote adapted from a fireplace mantle in the Frederick Rindge mansion best symbolizes the optimism which exists in West Adams: “California Shall be Ours as Long as the Stars Remain.”
Ivatt 2MT class 2-6-0 No 46512 entering Llynlcys with an up Llanfyllin to Oswestry service on the 11th February 1964. Artistically and visually it has all the elements and 'ingredients' for a splendid composition Vertical, parallel and diagonal lines and an arched bridge are the centrepiece while the train shot going away and about to go past the former abutments of the Crickheath Tramway and
under the road bridge are secondary. The engineman and the young girl waving to the cameraman all add to its character.
Crickheath Tramway
ORIGINALLY KNOWN AS THE PORTHYWAEN IRON RAILWAY.
The Montgomeryshire Canal's eastern section and the Ellesmere Canal met at "Porthywaen Lime Rocks", both being opened in 1797. To develop traffic, the Montgomeryshire Canal Company Act of 1794 authorised "That in case the Proprietor...of any Manor...containing...any quarries of Limestone or other stone...lying within a distance of Three Miles from the said Canal...shall find it expedient or necessary to make any Rail Way or Road for the purpose of conveying his...Limestone ..then it shall be lawful for him to make such Rail Way, Road, or Bridges, and Wharf". This tramway was one built under this clause by the Earl of Powys, from Crickheath Wharf (GR 32923234) generally westwards to the limestone quarries at Whitehaven. The opening date is unknown, Baxter has c1794, but this was before the canal was opened. W. Davies "General View of the Agriculture of North Wales," published in 1810 refers to the tramway and Christiansen & Miller have 1820 from Crickheath Wharf to Llynclys and on to Porthywaen about 1826.
The line is shown on the 2" Ordnance Surveyors Drawings of 1827, east of the Oswestry to Welshpool turnpike and the 1830-1831 surveyed section west of the turnpike. Beginning at 'Crick Heath Wharf' on the Ellesmere Canal the route ran generally westwards to cross the Oswestry to Welshpool turnpike (A483) on the level and then the Llynclys to Porthywaen road (B4396) also on the level, continuing west to the Limestone Quarries where it split into two short branches. The line is next shown on the 1" OS map published on the 14th of June 1837 following the same route to terminate at 'White Haven' at GR 32723242 about one and a half miles from Crickheath.
The Oswestry & Newtown Railway received its Act on the 26th of June 1855 and was opened from Oswestry to Pool Quay on the 1st of May 1860. As the line crossed the tramway at Llynclys, a bridge was built to carry the tramway across at GR 32843240 under a clause in the Act ordering the company not to interfere with the gradient of the tramway. The O & NR received a further Act for a short branch from Llynlys Junction to the quarries at Porthywaen adjacent to Whitehaven on the 3rd July 1860 and the Act prohibited the company from altering or interfering with the line or level of the tramway. The line opened on the 1st of May 1861, removing some traffic from the tramway which however remained in use to carry stone and lime for distribution by a canal. The Porthywaen branch ran alongside but to the north of the western part of the tramway.
In 1862 at the suggestion of the O&NR, two public sidings were to be provided on their Porthywaen branch for use by the quarries lessees in substitution for the existing siding on the line at Llynclys, where a short tramway branch ran to an exchange siding, was accepted on the 25th June. The implication of this is that the branch was initially used exclusively by Thomas Savin and other lessees had to move stone and lime down the tramway for transhipment to the O&NR. It is unclear if the interchange siding at Llynclys was built, the earthworks are shown on the 1875 OS map, so perhaps it was, but its life would have been very short one or two years. The 1875 OS map shows the same basic tramway route as 1837, detailing the single siding that reversed to reach the wharf at Crickheath, the bridge across the Cambrian, and the unused earthworks of the short interchange siding at Llynclys. At Whitehaven, the tramway served a timber yard and then curved to run beneath the Porthywaen Branch before running through a loop to terminate further north than earlier at the end of an enlarged Whitehaven Quarry at GR 32683244. Leases located in Powysland Reference Library, Welshpool, by Davies filed under "Savin & Co, leases" indicate that Thomas Savin leased Porthywaen Quarry in 1881 and 1887 and the tramway is described in the leases.
The said Earl (of Powys) was the owner of an Iron Tramway which for many years past had been used for conveying limestone from the Porthywaen Lime Rocks to the Ellesmere Canal at a place called Crickheath Wharf... the said Tramway was not wholly carried over lands of the said Earl but passed in part over lands belonging to other persons and a yearly payment was made by the said Earl to each of them in respect of the loss of land and trespass occasioned thereby..." A letter dated the 23rd January 1897 from Powys Castle Estate Office to H.Le Neve Foster (a director of the Porthywaen Lime Co Ltd, then working the quarries) headed Crickheath Tramway states "I am as anxious as you are to get this matter settled. I hope to see Lord Powys's Solicitor on Monday..." A second letter dated 16th February 1897 from H. Le Neve Foster to E.D Nicholson, the secretary and general manager of the Porthywaen Lime Co Ltd who was then working the Porthywaen quarries includes "How is the Crickheath Railway doing? I presume you are working this now and by this means will be able to clear more stone at Pear Tree (Quarry) and at the same time push on with Nut Tree (presumably another quarry) " The implication is that the "matter" was the purchase or lease of the Crickheath Tramway from the Estate but this is not yet confirmed.
The 1901 OS map shows the siding at Crickheath Wharf had been converted into a loop whilst, at Whitehaven, the line crossed a standard gauge siding on the level before continuing beneath the Porthywaen Branch to a crusher in Whitehaven Quarry. The Tanat Valley Light Railway, authorised on the 4th of June 1899 and opened on the 5th of January 1904, branched from the Porthywaen Branch and the initial portion of the branch was then upgraded for passenger use. Signals were provided to protect the tramway crossing under the control of the signalman at Porthywaen Signal Box with an additional signal to control the mixed gauge track to Whitehaven crusher. The 1926 OS map shows these changes at Whitehaven with the tramway crossing the Tanat Valley line on the level before running as a three-rail line behind Porthywaen Signal Box, beneath the Porthywaen line and terminating at a modified crusher in Whitehaven Quarry.
The line later closed, probably following the bursting of a canal culvert over the Morda Brook about 1932, following which the canal was not restored. The track was lifted in 1939. In 1932 the Steetley Lime & Basic Co took over the quarry and the Porthywaen signal box was reduced to a ground frame probably in the early 1930s, both perhaps indicating the demise of the tramway. A photograph of Whitehaven quarry dated the 31st of July 1934 certainly appears to show the tramway in the quarry, out of use and overgrown. The Davies paper read in 1945 notes "has been disused for some years, but the embankment across the field from the Oswestry -Welshpool road to the railway near Llynclys Station can be plainly seen". Today (2015) the wharf at Crickheath alongside the partially filled canal lies on private land, the stone abutments of the bridge over the O&NR at Llynclys plus a short length of the tramway embankment westwards and the girder bridge (cast Brymbo 1861) carrying the road over the tramway as it approached Whitehaven, constructed by the Oswestry & Newtown Railway, remain. what may be the remains of the crossing gate guarding the tramway crossing the access road to Llynclys goods yard are buried in the hedge?
Source P. Teather.
There are three Ashfords, really. The modern newtown, Swindonesque newbuilds stretching into the countryside; the Victorian railway town, all neat rows of brick buit houses and the station, and then there is the old town, timber-framed houses along narrow lanes, with St Mary standing towering above all but the modern office blocks.
The west end church was given over to a Christmas Fayre, but is also used now as a concert venue, while under the tower westwards is still in use as a church, with many of its ancient features left alone by the Victorians.
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A stately church in a good position set away from the hustle and bustle of this cosmopolitan town. The very narrow tower of 1475 is not visually satisfactory when viewed from a distance but its odd proportions are hardly noticed when standing at its base. The church is very much the product of the families who have been associated with it over the centuries and who are commemorated by monuments within. They include the Fogges and the Smythes. The former is supposed to have wanted to create a college of priests here, but by the late fifteenth century such foundations were going out of fashion and the remodelling of the church undertaken by Sir John Fogge may have just been a philanthropic cause. Unusually, when the church was restored in 1860 the architect Ewan Christian kept the galleries (he usually swept them away), but Christ Church had yet to be built and the population of this growing town would have needed all the accommodation it could get. Even in 1851 1000 people had attended the church in a single sitting. The pulpit, designed by Pearson, was made in 1897.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Ashford+1
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THE TOWN AND PARISH OF ASHFORD
LIES the next adjoining to Hothfield eastward. It is called in Domesday both Estefort and Essetesford, and in other antient records, Eshetisford, taking its name from the river, which runs close to it, which, Lambarde says, ought not to be called the Stour, till it has passed this town, but Eshe or Eschet, a name which has been for a great length of time wholly forgotten; this river being known, even from its first rise at Lenham hither, by the name of the Stour only.
A small part only of this parish, on the east, south and west sides of it, containing the borough of Henwood, alias Hewit, lying on the eastern or further side of the river from the town, part of which extends into the parish of Wilsborough, and the whole of it within the liberty of the manor of Wye, and the borough of Rudlow, which adjoins to Kingsnoth and Great Chart, are in this hundred of Chart and Longbridge; such part of the borough of Rudlow as lies adjoining to Kingsnoth, is said to lie in in jugo de Beavor, or the yoke of Beavor, and is divided from the town and liberty by the river, near a place called Pollbay; in which yoke there is both a hamlet and a green or common, of the name of Beavor; the remainder of the parish having been long separated from it, and made a distinct liberty, or jurisdiction of itself, having a constable of its own, and distinguished by the name of the liberty of the town of Ashford.
ASHFORD, at the time of taking the general survey of Domesday, was part of the possessions of Hugo de Montfort, who had accompanied the Conqueror hither, and was afterwards rewarded with this estate, among many others in different counties; in which record it is thus entered, under the general title of his lands:
¶Maigno holds of Hugo (de Montfort) Estefort. Turgisus held it of earl Godwin, and it is taxed at one suling. The arable land is half a carucate. There is nevertheless in demesne one carucate, and two villeins having one carucate. There are two servants, and eight acres of meadow. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, it was worth twenty five shillings; when he received it, twenty shillings; now thirty shilling.
The same Hugo holds Essela. Three tenants held it of king Edward, and could go whither they would with their lands. It was taxed at three yokes. The arable land is one carucate and an half. There are now four villeins, with two borderers having one carucate, and six acres of meadow. The whole, in the reign of king Edward the Confessor, was worth twenty shillings, and afterwards fifteen shillings, now twenty shillings.
Maigno held another Essetisford of the same Hugo. Wirelm held it of king Edward. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is four carucates. In demesne there are two, and two villeins, with fifteen borderers having three carucates. There is a church, and a priest, and three servants, and two mills of ten shillings and two pence. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth seventy shillings, and afterwards sixty shillings, now one hundred shillings.
Robert de Montfort, grandson of Hugh abovementioned, favouring the title of Robert Curthose, in opposition to king Henry I. to avoid being called in question upon that account, obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, leaving his possessions to the king; by which means this manor came into the hands of the crown. Soon after which it seems to have come into the possession of a family, who took their name from it. William de Asshetesford appears by the register of Horton priory to have been lord of it, and to have been succeeded by another of the same name. After which the family of Criol became owners of it, by whom it was held by knight's service of the king, in capite, by ward to Dover castle, and the repair of a tower in that castle, called the Ashford tower. (fn. 1) Simon de Criol, in the 27th and 28th year of Henry III. obtained a charter of free warren for this manor, whose son William de Criol passed it away to Roger de Leyborne, for Stocton, in Huntingdonshire, and Rumford, in Essex. William de Leyborne his son, in the 7th year of king Edward I. claimed and was allowed the privilege of a market here, before the justices itinerant. He died possessed of this manor in the 3d year of Edward II. leaving his grand-daughter Juliana, daughter of Thomas de Leyborne, who died in his father's life-time, heir both to her grandfather and father's possessions, from the greatness of which she was stiled the Infanta of Kent, (fn. 2) though thrice married, yet she died s. p. by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of Edward III. Upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, and continued there till king Richard II. vested it, among others, in feoffees, for the performance of certain religious bequests by the will of king Edward III. then lately deceased; and they, in compliance with it, soon afterwards, with the king's licence, purchased this manor, with those of Wall, and Esture, of the crown, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in the king's palace of Westminster, all which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 7th year, granted to them a fair in this town yearly, on the feast of St. John Port Latin, together with all liberties, and to have a steward to hold the court of it, &c. In which situation they continued till the 1st year of Edward VI. when this collegiate chapel was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where these manors did not continue long; for that king, in his 3d year, granted the manor of Esshetford, with that of Wall, and the manor of Esture, to Sir Anthony Aucher, of Otterden, to hold in capite; and he, in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, sold them to Sir Andrew Judde, of London, whose daughter and at length heir Alice, afterwards carried them in marriage to Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, commonly called the Customer, who died possessed of them in 1591, and lies buried in the south cross of this church, having had several sons and daughters, of, whom Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, the eldest, succeeded him here, and was sheriff anno 42 Elizabeth. Sir Thomas Smith, the second son, was of Bidborough and Sutton at Hone, and ambassador to Russia, of whom and his descendants, notice has been taken in the former volumes of this history; (fn. 3) and Henry, the third son, was of Corsham, in Wiltshire, whence this family originally descended, and Sir Richard Smith, the fourth, was of Leeds castle. Sir John Smythe, above-mentioned, died in 1609, and lies buried in the same vault as his father in this church, leaving one son Sir Thomas Smythe, of Westenhanger, K. B. who was in 1628 created Viscount Strangford, of Ireland, whose grandson Philip, viscount Strangford, dying about 1709, Henry Roper, lord Teynham, who had married Catherine his eldest daughter, by his will, became possessed of the manors of Ashford, Wall, and Esture. By her, who died in 1711, he had two sons, Philip and Henry, successively lords Teynham; notwithstanding which, having the uncontrolled power in these manors vested in him, he, on his marriage with Anne, second daughter and coheir of Thomas Lennard, earl of Sussex, and widow of Richard Barrett Lennard, esq. afterwards baroness Dacre, settled them on her and her issue by him in tail male. He died in 1623, and left her surviving, and possessed of these manors for her life. She afterwards married the hon. Robert Moore, and died in 1755. She had by lord Teynham two sons, Charles and Richard-Henry, (fn. 4) Charles Roper, the eldest son, died in 1754 intestate, leaving two sons, Trevor-Charles and Henry, who on their mother's death became entitled to these manors, as coheirs in gavelkind, a recovery having been suffered of them, limiting them after her death to Charles Roper their father, in tail male; but being infants, and there being many incumbrances on these estates, a bill was exhibited in chancery, and an act procured anno 29 George II. for the sale of them; and accordingly these manors were sold, under the direction of that court, in 1765, to the Rev. Francis Hender Foote, of Bishopsborne, who in 1768 parted with the manor of Wall, alias Court at Wall, to John Toke, esq. of Great Chart, whose son Nicholas Roundell Toke, is the present possessor of it; but he died possessed of the manors of Ashford and Esture in 1773, and was succeeded in them by his eldest son John Foote, esq. now of Bishopsborne, the present owner of them. There are several copyhold lands held of the manor of Ashford. A court leet and court baron is regularly held for it.
THE TOWN OF ASHFORD stands most pleasant and healthy, on the knoll of a hill, of a gentle ascent on every side, the high road from Hythe to Maidstone passing through it, from which, in the middle of the town, the high road branches off through a pleasant country towards Canterbury. The houses are mostly modern and well-built, and the high-street, which has been lately new paved, is of considerable width. The markethouse stands in the centre of it, and the church and school on the south side of it, the beautiful tower of the former being a conspicuous object to the adjoining country. It is a small, but neat and chearful town, and many of the inhabitants of a genteel rank in life. Near the market place, is the house of the late Dr. Isaac Rutton, a physician of long and extensive practice in these parts, being the eldest son of Matthias Rutton, gent of this town, by Sarah his wife, daughter of Sir N. Toke, of Godinton. He died in 1792, bearing for his arms, Parted per fess, azure, and or, three unicorns heads, couped at the neck, counterchanged; since which, his eldest son, Isaac Rutton, esq. now of Ospringeplace, has sold this house to Mr. John Basil Duckworth, in whom it is now vested. In the midst of it is a large handsome house, built in 1759, by John Mascall, gent. who resided in it, and died possessed of it in 1769, and was buried in Boughton Aluph church, bearing for his arms, Barry of two, or, and azure, three inescutcheons, ermine; and his only son, Robert Mascall, esq. now of Ashford, who married the daughter of Jeremiah Curteis, esq. is the present owner, and resides in it. At the east end of the town is a seat, called Brooke-place, formerly possessed by the family of Woodward, who were always stiled, in antient deeds, gentlemen, and bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, sable, between three grasshoppers, or; the last of them, Mr. John Woodward, gent. rebuilt this seat, and died possessed of it in 1757; of whose heirs it was purchased by Martha, widow of Moyle Breton, esq. of Kennington, whose two sons, the Rev. Moyle Breton, and Mr. Whitfield Breton, gent. alienated it to Josias Pattenson, esq. the second son of Mr. Josias Pattenson, of Biddenden, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Felix Kadwell, esq. of Rolvenden; he married Mary, daughter of Mr. Henry Dering, gent. of this parish, and widow of Mr. John Mascall above-mentioned, by whom he has no issue, and he is the present owner of this seat, and resides in it. There have been barracks erected lately here, which at present contain 4000 soldiers. The market is held on a Saturday weekly, for the sale of corn, which is now but little used; and a market for the sale of all sorts of fat and lean stock on the first and third Tuesday in every month, which has been of great use to prevent monopolies. Two fairs are annually held now, by the alteration of the stile, on May 17, and Sept. 9, and another on Oct. 24; besides which, there is an annual fair for wool on August 2, not many years since instituted and encouraged by the principal gentry and landholders, which promises to prove of the greatest utility and benefit to the fair sale of it. That branch of the river Stour which rises at Lenham, runs along the southern part of this parish, and having turned a corn mill belonging to the lord of this manor, continues its course close at the east end of the town, where there is a stone bridge of four arches, repaired at the expence of the county, and so on northwards towards Wye and Canterbury. On the south side of the river in this parish, next to Kingsnoth, within the borough of Rudlow, is the yoke of Beavor, with the hamlet and farm of that name, possessed in very early times, as appears by the register of Horton priory, by a family of that name, one of whom, John Beavor, was possessed of it in the reign of Henry II. and was descended from one of the same furname, who attended the Conqueror in his expedition hither. The parish contains about 2000 acres of land, and three hundred and twenty houses, the whole rental of it being 4000l. per annum; the inhabitants are 2000, of which about one hundred are diffenters. The highways throughout it, which not many years ago were exceeding bad, have been by the unanimity of the inhabitants, which has shewn itself remarkable in all their public improvements, a rare instance in parochial undertakings, and by the great attention to the repairs of them, especially in such parts as were near their own houses, are now excellent. The lands round it are much upon a gravelly soil, though towards the east and south there are some rich fertile pastures, intermixed with arable land, and several plantations of hops; but toward the west, the soil is in general sand, having much quarrystone mixed with it, where there is a great deal of coppice wood, quite to Potter's corner, at the boundary of this parish.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a large handsome building, consisting of three isles, with a transept, and three chancels, with the tower in the middle, which is losty and well proportioned, having four pinnacles at the top of it. There are eight bells in it, a set of chimes, and a clock. In the high chancel, on the north side, is the college John Fogge, the founder of the college here, who died in 1490, and his two wives, the brasses of their figures gone; but part of the inscription remains. And formerly, in Weever's time, there hung up in this chancel six atchievements, of those of this family whose burials had been attended by the heralds at arms, and with other ceremonies suitable to their degrees. Underneath the chancel is a large vault, full of the remains of the family. On the pavement in the middle, is a very antient curious gravestone, having on it the figure in brass of a woman, holding in her left hand a banner, with the arms of Ferrers, Six masctes, three and three, in pale; which, with a small part of the inscription round the edge, is all that is remaining; but there was formerly in brass, in her right hand, another banner, with the arms of Valoyns; over her head those of France and England quarterly; and under her feet a shield, being a cross, impaling three chevronels, the whole within a bordure, guttee de sang, and round the edge this inscription, Ici gift Elizabeth Comite D' athels la file sign de Ferrers . . . dieu asoil, qe morust le 22 jour d'octob. can de grace MCCCLXXV. Weever says, she was wife to David de Strabolgie, the fourth of that name, earl of Athol, in Scotland, and daughter of Henry, lord Ferrers, of Groby; and being secondly married to John Malmayns, of this county, died here in this town. Though by a pedigree of the family of Brograve, she is said to marry T. Fogge, esq. of Ashford; if so, he might perhaps have been her third husband. Near her is a memorial for William Whitfield, gent. obt. 1739. The north chancel belonged to Repton manor. In the vault underneath lay three of the family of Tuston, sometime since removed to Rainham, and it has been granted to the Husseys; Thomas Hussey, esq. of this town, died in 1779, and was buried in it. In the south chancel are memorials for the Pattensons, Whitfields, and Apsleys, of this place; and one for Henry Dering, gent. of Shelve, obt. 1752, and Hester his wife; arms, A saltier, a crescent for difference, impaling, on a chevron, between three persons, three crosses, formee; and another memorial for Thomasine, wife of John Handfield, obt. 1704. In the north cross are several antient stones, their brasses all gone, excepting a shield, with the arms of Fogge on one. At the end is a monument for John Norwood, gent. and Mary his wife, of this town, who lie with their children in the vault underneath. The south cross is parted off lengthways, for the family of Smith, lords of Ashford manor, who lie in a vault underneath. In it are three superb monuments, which, not many years since, were beautified and restored to their original state, by the late chief baron Smythe, a descendant of this family. One is for Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, in 1591; the second for Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, his son, and Elizabeth his wife; and the third for Sir Richard Smyth, of Leeds castle, in 1628: all which have been already mentioned before. Their figures, at full length and proportion, are lying on, each of them, with their several coats of arms and quarterings blazoned. In the other part of this cross, is a memorial for Baptist Pigott, A. M. son of Baptist Pigott, of Dartford, and schoolmaster here, obt. 1657, and at the end of it, is the archbishop's consistory court. In the south isle is a memorial for Thomas Curteis, gent. obt. 1718, and Elizabeth his wife; arms, Curteis impaling Carter. Under the tower is one for Samuel Warren, vicar here forty-eight years, obt. 1720. The three isles were new pewed and handsomely paved in 1745. There are five galleries, and an handsome branch for candles in the middled isle; the whole kept in an excellent state of repair and neatness. There was formerly much curtious painted glass in the windows, particularly the figures of one of the family of Valoyns, his two wives and children, with their arms. In the south window of the cross isle, and in other windows, the figures, kneeling, of king Edward III. the black prince, Richard, duke of Gloucester, the lord Hastings. Sir William Haute, the lord Scales, Richard, earl Rivers, and the dutchess of Bedford his wife, Sir John Fogge, Sir John Peche, Richard Horne, Roger Manstone, and—Guildford, most of which were in the great west window, each habited in their surcoats of arms, not the least traces of which, or of any other coloured glass, are remaining throughout this church. Sir John Goldstone, parson of Ivechurch, as appears by his will in 1503, was buried in the choir of this church, and gave several costly ornaments and vestments for the use of it.