View allAll Photos Tagged xscape
Also at the Junction 32 Retail Outlet/Xscape, was Arriva Optare Tempo 1312, seen here preparing to work a 138 to Castleford.
Having none in the immediate area, I always forget how nice these really are - presumably the word Optare is why operators steer clear of them though!
Captured entering Partick Bus Stn on the first morning of operation in Nov 2006 of the "Braehead Bullet" service is this Wright Eclipse bodied Volvo B7RLE. The Bullet ran non stop from Partick to Braehead (Xscape) via the Clydeside Expressway, Clyde Tunnel and the M8. It later evolved into the successful 747 service.
Representing the normal allocation for the 26 (Glasgow - Barrhead (Nethercraigs) via Govan, Braehead, Renfrew & Paisley), Barrhead-allocated E200 8028 swings onto Paisley's St. Mirren St one damp December day bound for Nethercraigs.
Note the 'LC' emissions sticker on the near-side in place of the usual number, which stands for 'Low Carbon'. These are the only buses I've noted in the Greater Glasgow area with this sticker.
Photo Date: 2nd December 2017
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam (I.F.P.), no. 3350. Caption: Read Song Parade.
Paul Anka (1941) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor. Anka became famous in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with hit songs like 'Diana' (1957), 'Lonely Boy' (1959), 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' (1959), and '(You're) Having My Baby' (1974). He wrote the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, 'My Way' (1969). He also appeared in such films as The Longest Day (1962).
Paul Albert Anka was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1941. His parents, Camelia and Andy Anka owned a restaurant called the Locanda, that was popular with local entertainers. He taught himself to play guitar and piano as a teen and formed a vocal group called the Bobbysoxers with friends that performed locally in Ottawa. Paul Anka recorded his first single, I Confess when he was 14. In 1957 he went to New York City where he auditioned for Don Costa at ABC. He sang the original song Diana (1957). He was quickly offered a recording contract, and Diana rocketed to #1 on the Canadian and U.S. music charts. With dales of more than 20 million copies, Diana is one of the best-selling singles ever by a Canadian recording artist. He followed up with four songs that made it into the Top 20 in 1958, including It's Time to Cry, which hit #4. Only 17, he was one of the biggest teen idols of the time. He toured Britain, then Australia with Buddy Holly. Anka wrote for him It Doesn't Matter Anymore, which Holly recorded just before he died in 1959. Anka's next hit Puppy Love (1960) was inspired by his girlfriend Annette Funicello.
Paul Anka hit the Italian market with Summer's Gone in 1960. It was released as Dove Sei. The record got immediate success, reaching #4 on Italian hit lists. His top hit was Ogni Giorno which scored #1 in 1962, followed by Piangerò per te and Ogni Volta, which reached both #2, in 1963 and 1964. Ogni volta (Every Time) was sung by Anka during the Festival di Sanremo of 1964 and then sold more than one million copies in Italy alone. Anka's talent also included the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which was reworked in 1962 from a song Anka wrote earlier. Anka composed Tom Jones's biggest hit record, She's a Lady (1971), and wrote the English lyrics to Frank Sinatra's signature song My Way (1969). It was originally the French song Comme d'habitude, and My Way has been covered by many including Elvis Presley. In the 1960s Anka began acting in motion pictures as well as writing songs for them, most notably the theme for the hit film The Longest Day (Ken Annakin a.o., 1962). For his film work, he wrote and recorded one of his greatest hits, Lonely Boy (1959). Like most North American recording artists, he saw his career stalled by the British Invasion. By the late 1960s, his career focused on adult contemporary and big-band standards, played regularly in Las Vegas.
After more than ten years without a top 25 hit record, Paul Anka teamed up in 1974 with Odia Coates to record the #1 hit, (You're) Having My Baby. The two would record two more duets that made it into the Top 10, One Man Woman/One Woman Man (#7) and I Don't Like to Sleep Alone (#8). In 1983, he co-wrote the song I Never Heard with Michael Jackson. It was retitled and released in 2009 under the name This Is It. An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, Love Never Felt So Good, was since discovered and was released on Jackson's posthumous album Xscape in 2014. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984. Paul Anka became a naturalized US citizen in 1990. Anka was married to Anne de Zogheb, the daughter of a Lebanese diplomat, Charles de Zogheb, from 1963, until 2001. They have five daughters. In 2008, Anka married his personal trainer, Anna Åberg, in Sardinia. They divorced in 2010 and share custody of their son, Ethan. An autobiography, 'My Way' (co-written with David Dalton), was published in 2013.
Source: Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
🏨 The Darrington Hotel in Pontefract is a charming 1930s-style retreat nestled in the Yorkshire countryside, just off the A1. It’s part of the Greene King Inns group and offers a cozy, family-friendly atmosphere with 28 en-suite rooms.
Here’s what you can expect:
️ Pub & Restaurant: Serves hearty British classics, including steaks, fish & chips, and Greene King beers. There's also a large beer garden and a kids’ play area.
️ Rooms: Spacious and comfy, with flat-screen TVs, free Wi-Fi, and complimentary toiletries. Family rooms are available.
🚗 Location Perks: Close to Pontefract Racecourse, Mid Yorkshire Golf Club, and attractions like Xscape Yorkshire.
🅿️ Amenities: Free parking, 24-hour reception, and a welcoming vibe. Breakfast is served daily, with both cooked and continental options.
Taken on my first night out with the new OM System OM-5 II. The built in Image Stabilisation is truly fantastic and makes a lot of shots possible that would have needed a tripod lugged around previously.
This shot was taken around Milton Keynes City Centre of one of the Arriva Buses leaving the traffic lights.
aerial view of the Xscape leisure and shopping complex in Milton Keynes. It features a 170m real snow slope. Buckinghamshire UK aerial image
From The Times
August 2, 2008
Kevin McCloud’s big town plan for Castleford
Kevin McCloud’s latest grand design is to inject new life into the town of Castleford. Our correspondents assesses the results
Tom Dyckhoff
We thought ’old on, they’ll come with their TV cameras and MDF messing the place up. Well no, you’re not, and that’s that.” Rheta Davison wasn’t, at first, looking forward to the arrival of Kevin McCloud. Reality TV hasn’t had the best press, so when Channel 4 and Talkback, the makers of McCloud’s hit TV series Grand Designs, turned up in 2003 to film the regeneration of Davison’s home town of Castleford, West Yorkshire, a run-down former coal-mining town, you could forgive locals for being a tad sceptical.
Davison, a no-nonsense, call-a-spade-a-spade lady of the kind only Yorkshire produces, has lived here all her life. She now runs her estate’s community group. “You’ve got to remember Cas has been promised things time and again,” she explains. “We’ve all been through times. My husband was made redundant, which is why we ended up here [on the council estate] with four kids to bring up. The place is full of scars, bad scars an’ all. We all just thought they’d do some cheap makeover, make us northerners out to be idiots and disappear and that would be that.”
How wrong she was. This was no instant makeover. “The Castleford Project” became a joke in TV circles. Heard the one about the channel that thought it could film eight building projects from scratch in, er, two years? Have they never watched Grand Designs?
“I think I was the only one to say, you know it takes two years just to design and build a house,” says McCloud. “And you want to regenerate a town? Mad, just mad. TV people think that if they say two years real life will just fit in.”
Five years on, though, and the project is not only finished but ready for broadcast. The idea is simple, says McCloud: “Can design save a failing town?” Talkback “interviewed” many contenders left behind by Britain’s so-called urban renaissance, but selected Castleford for its community spirit. The town may have above-average stats for teenage pregnancy and below-average ones for educational attainment, but, says McCloud “the locals really had drive”.
“There is a version of events that nothing was happening here till Channel 4 turned up with their magic dust,” says Wakefield Council’s leader, Peter Box, “but that’s nonsense.” Two decades on, Glasshoughton colliery has been replaced by the giant Xscape indoor dry ski slope, employing more people than the pit – many of them new arrivals, mind you – and surrounded by retail sheds, a multiplex, a new Asda and rising new suburban homes. At the junction of the M62 and M1, Castleford is rebranding itself as a commuter ’burb for émigrés from Leeds. But its existing residents weren’t without ideas either.
All Davison and her community group wanted was a play area. “Children have a right to be heard in a community,” she says. “They’re no less clever here than anywhere else. It’s just that they’ve got no aspirations. They’re born into families with no jobs.” Talkback selected Cutsyke’s “playforest”, and seven other projects, large and small: a new underpass to the town centre replacing a grotty alley beneath the railway; a new “village green” in the former pit village of New Fryston; a newly landscaped market area; a new town centre gallery; a new pedestrian bridge across the Aire, and improvements such as new bollards and traffic calming around Wilson Street. These were partnered with eight teams of designers, with all decisions to be made by the locals and community champions, and let the cameras roll.
Five years later, the physical results are impressive. Talkback attracted serious talent. On the steering committees are leading lights such as Roger Zogolovitch, one of Britain’s most influential, design-led developers, and Peter Rogers, brother of Richard and the founding CEO of developers Stanhope. Architects included rising stars such as DSDHA and Hudson Architects, plus international luminaries including Martha Schwartz.
Schwartz’s new village green gleams – even if its avant-garde angles and artfully rusted bollards by Antony Gormley seem grandiose for the edge of town. Renato Benedetti’s £4.8 million footbridge is an astonishing tour de force, its steel, serpentine curves daintily tiptoeing across the torrent of the Aire. Locals swarm across day and night, says its community champion, Wendy Rayner. “When you get to the middle of the bridge, you’re not in Castleford, you are somewhere else. You meet your friends. They’ve started having picnics on it. Nobody ever had picnics here before. We’ve got kingfishers, cormorants, mallard ducks and water-hens. They’re pulling pike out the river. It’s a living museum. Kids his age,” she nods to her grandson, Thomas, “they don’t even know what a lump of coal is.”
The smaller projects are just as influential. The new underpass beneath Tickle Cott Bridge cost only a couple of hundred thousand pounds, but for that, DSDHA delivered a piece of sophisticated concrete geometry, which, says the architect Deborah Saunt, “is about cheering up those spots planning usually forgets about”. And the impact on all participants is palpable. But there are, of course, naysayers. As I gawp at Benedetti’s bridge, a man comes up and literally spits on it – “Bloody waste of money” – before hurtling off. “Ah, you always get ’em. Bloody moaners,” Davison says. “Don’t put the effort in. Where would you rather the money went? Wakefield?”
Tri-axle Volvo B12BT Plaxton Panther KX09 NCF is at Leeds bus station with an X62 service from Hull via Goole and Xscape castleford, the turning shot here shows the rear steering axle at work. Rumour has it this could be shifted to work the York and Huddersfield Megabus services.....
Class 40 no 40.192 at Glasshoughton Colliery, Castleford. May 22 1976.
Glasshoughton Colliery was to close in 1986.
The site has now been redeveloped as a retail park including the Xscape indoor ski slope and Junction 32 Outlet Shopping Village.
Big Dutch card, no. 4919. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Paul Anka (1941) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor. Anka became famous in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with hit songs like Diana (1957), Lonely Boy (1959), Put Your Head on My Shoulder (1959), and (You're) Having My Baby (1974). He wrote the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, My Way (1969).
Paul Albert Anka was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1941. His parents, Camelia and Andy Anka owned a restaurant called the Locanda, that was popular with local entertainers. He taught himself to play guitar and piano as a teen and formed a vocal group called the Bobbysoxers with friends that performed locally in Ottawa. Paul Anka recorded his first single, I Confess when he was 14. In 1957 he went to New York City where he auditioned for Don Costa at ABC. He sang the original song Diana (1957). He was quickly offered a recording contract, and Diana rocketed to #1 on the Canadian and U.S. music charts. With dales of more than 20 million copies, Diana is one of the best-selling singles ever by a Canadian recording artist. He followed up with four songs that made it into the Top 20 in 1958, including It's Time to Cry, which hit #4. Only 17, he was one of the biggest teen idols of the time. He toured Britain, then Australia with Buddy Holly. Anka wrote for him It Doesn't Matter Anymore, which Holly recorded just before he died in 1959. Anka's next hit Puppy Love (1960) was inspired by his girlfriend Annette Funicello.
Paul Anka hit the Italian market with Summer's Gone in 1960. It was released as Dove Sei. The record got immediate success, reaching #4 on Italian hit lists. His top hit was Ogni Giorno which scored #1 in 1962, followed by Piangerò per te and Ogni Volta, which reached both #2, in 1963 and 1964. Ogni volta (Every Time) was sung by Anka during the Festival di Sanremo of 1964 and then sold more than one million copies in Italy alone. Anka's talent also included the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which was reworked in 1962 from a song Anka wrote earlier. Anka composed Tom Jones's biggest hit record, She's a Lady (1971), and wrote the English lyrics to Frank Sinatra's signature song My Way (1969). It was originally the French song Comme d'habitude, and My Way has been covered by many including Elvis Presley. In the 1960s Anka began acting in motion pictures as well as writing songs for them, most notably the theme for the hit film The Longest Day (Ken Annakin a.o., 1962). For his film work, he wrote and recorded one of his greatest hits, Lonely Boy (1959). Like most North American recording artists, he saw his career stalled by the British Invasion. By the late 1960s, his career focused on adult contemporary and big-band standards, played regularly in Las Vegas.
After more than ten years without a top 25 hit record, Paul Anka teamed up in 1974 with Odia Coates to record the #1 hit, (You're) Having My Baby. The two would record two more duets that made it into the Top 10, One Man Woman/One Woman Man (#7) and I Don't Like to Sleep Alone (#8). In 1983, he co-wrote the song I Never Heard with Michael Jackson. It was retitled and released in 2009 under the name This Is It. An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, Love Never Felt So Good, was since discovered and was released on Jackson's posthumous album Xscape in 2014. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984. Paul Anka became a naturalized US citizen in 1990. Anka was married to Anne de Zogheb, the daughter of a Lebanese diplomat, Charles de Zogheb, from 1963, until 2001. They have five daughters. In 2008, Anka married his personal trainer, Anna Åberg, in Sardinia. They divorced in 2010 and share custody of their son, Ethan. An autobiography, My Way (co-written with David Dalton), was published in 2013.
Source: Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
20 October 2015
Arriva Shires 3770 MX12 KWZ
In plain Sapphire livery for the launch of the 6 due on Saturday 21 November at Xscape.
Milton Keynes Station
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris. Photo: Vallois.
Paul Anka (1941) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor. Anka became famous in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with hit songs like 'Diana' (1957), 'Lonely Boy' (1959), 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' (1959), and '(You're) Having My Baby' (1974). He wrote the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, 'My Way' (1969). He also appeared in such films as The Longest Day (1962).
Paul Albert Anka was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1941. His parents, Camelia and Andy Anka owned a restaurant called the Locanda, that was popular with local entertainers. He taught himself to play guitar and piano as a teen and formed a vocal group called the Bobbysoxers with friends that performed locally in Ottawa. Paul Anka recorded his first single, I Confess when he was 14. In 1957 he went to New York City where he auditioned for Don Costa at ABC. He sang the original song Diana (1957). He was quickly offered a recording contract, and Diana rocketed to #1 on the Canadian and U.S. music charts. With dales of more than 20 million copies, Diana is one of the best-selling singles ever by a Canadian recording artist. He followed up with four songs that made it into the Top 20 in 1958, including It's Time to Cry, which hit #4. Only 17, he was one of the biggest teen idols of the time. He toured Britain, then Australia with Buddy Holly. Anka wrote for him It Doesn't Matter Anymore, which Holly recorded just before he died in 1959. Anka's next hit Puppy Love (1960) was inspired by his girlfriend Annette Funicello.
Paul Anka hit the Italian market with Summer's Gone in 1960. It was released as Dove Sei. The record got immediate success, reaching #4 on Italian hit lists. His top hit was Ogni Giorno which scored #1 in 1962, followed by Piangerò per te and Ogni Volta, which reached both #2, in 1963 and 1964. Ogni volta (Every Time) was sung by Anka during the Festival di Sanremo of 1964 and then sold more than one million copies in Italy alone. Anka's talent also included the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which was reworked in 1962 from a song Anka wrote earlier. Anka composed Tom Jones's biggest hit record, She's a Lady (1971), and wrote the English lyrics to Frank Sinatra's signature song My Way (1969). It was originally the French song Comme d'habitude, and My Way has been covered by many including Elvis Presley. In the 1960s Anka began acting in motion pictures as well as writing songs for them, most notably the theme for the hit film The Longest Day (Ken Annakin a.o., 1962). For his film work, he wrote and recorded one of his greatest hits, Lonely Boy (1959). Like most North American recording artists, he saw his career stalled by the British Invasion. By the late 1960s, his career focused on adult contemporary and big-band standards, played regularly in Las Vegas.
After more than ten years without a top 25 hit record, Paul Anka teamed up in 1974 with Odia Coates to record the #1 hit, (You're) Having My Baby. The two would record two more duets that made it into the Top 10, One Man Woman/One Woman Man (#7) and I Don't Like to Sleep Alone (#8). In 1983, he co-wrote the song I Never Heard with Michael Jackson. It was retitled and released in 2009 under the name This Is It. An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, Love Never Felt So Good, was since discovered and was released on Jackson's posthumous album Xscape in 2014. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984. Paul Anka became a naturalized US citizen in 1990. Anka was married to Anne de Zogheb, the daughter of a Lebanese diplomat, Charles de Zogheb, from 1963, until 2001. They have five daughters. In 2008, Anka married his personal trainer, Anna Åberg, in Sardinia. They divorced in 2010 and share custody of their son, Ethan. An autobiography, 'My Way' (co-written with David Dalton), was published in 2013.
Source: Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
A huge thank you to both Kerry and Tony for taking us aloft for a night shoot. Personally I had a poor shoot, with just a very few shots worth looking at, but the actual flight itself was amazing! Thanks again folks, you're the best.
This shot shows a large part of Milton Keynes which is a huge town chasing 'city status' in England. The large cockroach shape on the left is known at 'Xscape', home to an indoor ski slope and shops.
PLM Illumination Ltd
Unit 6 Arthur Drive
Hoo Farm Industrial Estate
Kidderminster, Worcs DY11 7RA
UK
T: 0044 (0)1562 66441
F: 0044 (0)1562 829992
E: info@plmgroup.co.uk
W: www.plmgroup.co.ukFrom The Times
August 2, 2008
Kevin McCloud’s big town plan for Castleford
Kevin McCloud’s latest grand design is to inject new life into the town of Castleford. Our correspondents assesses the results
Tom Dyckhoff
We thought ’old on, they’ll come with their TV cameras and MDF messing the place up. Well no, you’re not, and that’s that.” Rheta Davison wasn’t, at first, looking forward to the arrival of Kevin McCloud. Reality TV hasn’t had the best press, so when Channel 4 and Talkback, the makers of McCloud’s hit TV series Grand Designs, turned up in 2003 to film the regeneration of Davison’s home town of Castleford, West Yorkshire, a run-down former coal-mining town, you could forgive locals for being a tad sceptical.
Davison, a no-nonsense, call-a-spade-a-spade lady of the kind only Yorkshire produces, has lived here all her life. She now runs her estate’s community group. “You’ve got to remember Cas has been promised things time and again,” she explains. “We’ve all been through times. My husband was made redundant, which is why we ended up here [on the council estate] with four kids to bring up. The place is full of scars, bad scars an’ all. We all just thought they’d do some cheap makeover, make us northerners out to be idiots and disappear and that would be that.”
How wrong she was. This was no instant makeover. “The Castleford Project” became a joke in TV circles. Heard the one about the channel that thought it could film eight building projects from scratch in, er, two years? Have they never watched Grand Designs?
“I think I was the only one to say, you know it takes two years just to design and build a house,” says McCloud. “And you want to regenerate a town? Mad, just mad. TV people think that if they say two years real life will just fit in.”
Five years on, though, and the project is not only finished but ready for broadcast. The idea is simple, says McCloud: “Can design save a failing town?” Talkback “interviewed” many contenders left behind by Britain’s so-called urban renaissance, but selected Castleford for its community spirit. The town may have above-average stats for teenage pregnancy and below-average ones for educational attainment, but, says McCloud “the locals really had drive”.
“There is a version of events that nothing was happening here till Channel 4 turned up with their magic dust,” says Wakefield Council’s leader, Peter Box, “but that’s nonsense.” Two decades on, Glasshoughton colliery has been replaced by the giant Xscape indoor dry ski slope, employing more people than the pit – many of them new arrivals, mind you – and surrounded by retail sheds, a multiplex, a new Asda and rising new suburban homes. At the junction of the M62 and M1, Castleford is rebranding itself as a commuter ’burb for émigrés from Leeds. But its existing residents weren’t without ideas either.
All Davison and her community group wanted was a play area. “Children have a right to be heard in a community,” she says. “They’re no less clever here than anywhere else. It’s just that they’ve got no aspirations. They’re born into families with no jobs.” Talkback selected Cutsyke’s “playforest”, and seven other projects, large and small: a new underpass to the town centre replacing a grotty alley beneath the railway; a new “village green” in the former pit village of New Fryston; a newly landscaped market area; a new town centre gallery; a new pedestrian bridge across the Aire, and improvements such as new bollards and traffic calming around Wilson Street. These were partnered with eight teams of designers, with all decisions to be made by the locals and community champions, and let the cameras roll.
Five years later, the physical results are impressive. Talkback attracted serious talent. On the steering committees are leading lights such as Roger Zogolovitch, one of Britain’s most influential, design-led developers, and Peter Rogers, brother of Richard and the founding CEO of developers Stanhope. Architects included rising stars such as DSDHA and Hudson Architects, plus international luminaries including Martha Schwartz.
Schwartz’s new village green gleams – even if its avant-garde angles and artfully rusted bollards by Antony Gormley seem grandiose for the edge of town. Renato Benedetti’s £4.8 million footbridge is an astonishing tour de force, its steel, serpentine curves daintily tiptoeing across the torrent of the Aire. Locals swarm across day and night, says its community champion, Wendy Rayner. “When you get to the middle of the bridge, you’re not in Castleford, you are somewhere else. You meet your friends. They’ve started having picnics on it. Nobody ever had picnics here before. We’ve got kingfishers, cormorants, mallard ducks and water-hens. They’re pulling pike out the river. It’s a living museum. Kids his age,” she nods to her grandson, Thomas, “they don’t even know what a lump of coal is.”
The smaller projects are just as influential. The new underpass beneath Tickle Cott Bridge cost only a couple of hundred thousand pounds, but for that, DSDHA delivered a piece of sophisticated concrete geometry, which, says the architect Deborah Saunt, “is about cheering up those spots planning usually forgets about”. And the impact on all participants is palpable. But there are, of course, naysayers. As I gawp at Benedetti’s bridge, a man comes up and literally spits on it – “Bloody waste of money” – before hurtling off. “Ah, you always get ’em. Bloody moaners,” Davison says. “Don’t put the effort in. Where would you rather the money went? Wakefield?”
castleford watermill
The history of Allinson
The story begins with a Victorian doctor named Thomas Richard Allinson. Born in 1858 near Manchester, he qualified in medicine at the age of just 21.
From the start he took a keen interest in nutrition and, only a few years into his career, adopted Naturopathy. This form of medicine avoids drugs and encourages the consumption of natural foods. His ideas also became known as ‘hygienic’ or ‘Allinsonian’ medicine.
Dr Allinson went on to establish a practice in London, through which he promoted healthy eating. He placed particular emphasis on vegetarianism and the benefits of wholemeal flour in bread.
However, in those days such views were extremely radical and were to set him on a collision course with the medical establishment. The Royal College of Physicians doubted his theories and resented his publicising them. In 1892 matters came to a head and he was struck off the medical register. But he wouldn’t let that stop him pursuing his interest. After all, he didn’t need to be a doctor to make bread.
Ever since the industrial revolution nearly all flour was produced using roller mills. This refined the flour to such a degree that valuable nutrients and fibre were lost. Convinced of the value of whole wheat, Allinson purchased his own stone-grinding flour mill in Bethnal Green, London. He then set up The Natural Food Company under the slogan ‘Health without medicine’, and began baking bread his way.
The Allinson brand
The nutritional value of wholemeal bread was finally accepted by the Government during the First World War, when Allinson was in his 50s. He was even offered reinstatement to the General Medical Council. However he turned it down. After all, he’d found a new outlet for his ideas on nutrition.
With official acceptance that wholemeal was good for the nation’s health, demand for Allinson’s flours increased dramatically, and his company continued to expand after his death in 1918. Further Allinson flour mills were soon opened in Newport, Monmouthshire and Castleford, Yorkshire.
His legacy, the Allinson brand, became a byword for wholesome high-quality flour, which in turn produces wholesome, tasty and nutritious bread. This still remains so to this day.From The Times
August 2, 2008
Kevin McCloud’s big town plan for Castleford
Kevin McCloud’s latest grand design is to inject new life into the town of Castleford. Our correspondents assesses the results
Tom Dyckhoff
We thought ’old on, they’ll come with their TV cameras and MDF messing the place up. Well no, you’re not, and that’s that.” Rheta Davison wasn’t, at first, looking forward to the arrival of Kevin McCloud. Reality TV hasn’t had the best press, so when Channel 4 and Talkback, the makers of McCloud’s hit TV series Grand Designs, turned up in 2003 to film the regeneration of Davison’s home town of Castleford, West Yorkshire, a run-down former coal-mining town, you could forgive locals for being a tad sceptical.
Davison, a no-nonsense, call-a-spade-a-spade lady of the kind only Yorkshire produces, has lived here all her life. She now runs her estate’s community group. “You’ve got to remember Cas has been promised things time and again,” she explains. “We’ve all been through times. My husband was made redundant, which is why we ended up here [on the council estate] with four kids to bring up. The place is full of scars, bad scars an’ all. We all just thought they’d do some cheap makeover, make us northerners out to be idiots and disappear and that would be that.”
How wrong she was. This was no instant makeover. “The Castleford Project” became a joke in TV circles. Heard the one about the channel that thought it could film eight building projects from scratch in, er, two years? Have they never watched Grand Designs?
“I think I was the only one to say, you know it takes two years just to design and build a house,” says McCloud. “And you want to regenerate a town? Mad, just mad. TV people think that if they say two years real life will just fit in.”
Five years on, though, and the project is not only finished but ready for broadcast. The idea is simple, says McCloud: “Can design save a failing town?” Talkback “interviewed” many contenders left behind by Britain’s so-called urban renaissance, but selected Castleford for its community spirit. The town may have above-average stats for teenage pregnancy and below-average ones for educational attainment, but, says McCloud “the locals really had drive”.
“There is a version of events that nothing was happening here till Channel 4 turned up with their magic dust,” says Wakefield Council’s leader, Peter Box, “but that’s nonsense.” Two decades on, Glasshoughton colliery has been replaced by the giant Xscape indoor dry ski slope, employing more people than the pit – many of them new arrivals, mind you – and surrounded by retail sheds, a multiplex, a new Asda and rising new suburban homes. At the junction of the M62 and M1, Castleford is rebranding itself as a commuter ’burb for émigrés from Leeds. But its existing residents weren’t without ideas either.
All Davison and her community group wanted was a play area. “Children have a right to be heard in a community,” she says. “They’re no less clever here than anywhere else. It’s just that they’ve got no aspirations. They’re born into families with no jobs.” Talkback selected Cutsyke’s “playforest”, and seven other projects, large and small: a new underpass to the town centre replacing a grotty alley beneath the railway; a new “village green” in the former pit village of New Fryston; a newly landscaped market area; a new town centre gallery; a new pedestrian bridge across the Aire, and improvements such as new bollards and traffic calming around Wilson Street. These were partnered with eight teams of designers, with all decisions to be made by the locals and community champions, and let the cameras roll.
Five years later, the physical results are impressive. Talkback attracted serious talent. On the steering committees are leading lights such as Roger Zogolovitch, one of Britain’s most influential, design-led developers, and Peter Rogers, brother of Richard and the founding CEO of developers Stanhope. Architects included rising stars such as DSDHA and Hudson Architects, plus international luminaries including Martha Schwartz.
Schwartz’s new village green gleams – even if its avant-garde angles and artfully rusted bollards by Antony Gormley seem grandiose for the edge of town. Renato Benedetti’s £4.8 million footbridge is an astonishing tour de force, its steel, serpentine curves daintily tiptoeing across the torrent of the Aire. Locals swarm across day and night, says its community champion, Wendy Rayner. “When you get to the middle of the bridge, you’re not in Castleford, you are somewhere else. You meet your friends. They’ve started having picnics on it. Nobody ever had picnics here before. We’ve got kingfishers, cormorants, mallard ducks and water-hens. They’re pulling pike out the river. It’s a living museum. Kids his age,” she nods to her grandson, Thomas, “they don’t even know what a lump of coal is.”
The smaller projects are just as influential. The new underpass beneath Tickle Cott Bridge cost only a couple of hundred thousand pounds, but for that, DSDHA delivered a piece of sophisticated concrete geometry, which, says the architect Deborah Saunt, “is about cheering up those spots planning usually forgets about”. And the impact on all participants is palpable. But there are, of course, naysayers. As I gawp at Benedetti’s bridge, a man comes up and literally spits on it – “Bloody waste of money” – before hurtling off. “Ah, you always get ’em. Bloody moaners,” Davison says. “Don’t put the effort in. Where would you rather the money went? Wakefield
One of my photos got accepted into the Luminous show at The Arc Gallery!
CONGRATULATIONS! We are pleased that your artwork listed below was selected by Danielle Fox, juror, for inclusion in the “Luminous” exhibition at Arc Gallery. Your work will be exhibited in our gallery and on view on the Arc on-line catalog from November 11th to December 9th, as well as included in the “Luminous” print catalog. O
Danielle Fox Juror’s Statement
When I think of luminosity, I think of something that is glowing from within. A luminous glow evokes a sense of awe and wonder, as it suggests that a hidden source of energy is at work. Luminosity is not a thing in the world, but rather a sensory experience and emotional response. To recreate this kind of metaphysical experience with an object (and at their most banal, all the artworks in this show are objects, whether a painting, photograph, or sculpture) is, I believe, a skill of the highest order when it comes to art. Now mind you, western artists have been transfixed by this goal at least since early Byzantine painting, and since then many approaches have become very cliché. Unfortunately, when we see a trope used too often in art, the wonder and awe tend to diminish. I hope that the group I have offered presents diverse approaches to luminosity, including a variety of styles and media, while still feeling very contemporary.
“Luminous” events at Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco
▪ Saturday, November 11th, 7-9PM - Opening Reception
▪ Saturday, December 9th, 1-3PM - Closing Reception & Artist Talk
-Art Koch
Tri-axle Volvo B12BT Plaxton Panther KX09 NCF is at Leeds bus station with an X62 service from Hull via Goole and Xscape castleford, the turning shot here shows the rear steering axle at work. Rumour has it this could be shifted to work the York and Huddersfield Megabus services.....
The charming Glasshoughton Railway Station which is seemingly an extension of the adjacent snow dome!
The station is on the Pontefract line and there is an hourly service to Leeds and Knottingley Monday to Saturday, and a service every two hours in each direction on Sunday. There are a few trains each day to Goole