Curiouser and Curiouser, by Wiggia

I have for reasons unknown other than a curious mind been drawn to items - buildings, whatever - that are out of the ordinary or have a strange fascination. Items like follies that are built for no other reason than they can, relics of the past in all forms and downright peculiar and baffling. Most apart from the follies have history of value or purpose for when they were built and some still fulfil or could the original function.

The industrial revolution has left many engineering marvels that are still with us and some still working. Anyone who has travelled on the canals will have come across the likes of the Anderton Lift or the remains of the Foxton Inclined Plane, a method of boat lift that did away with slow and cumbersome locks - the story is seen here:



The Foxton Inclined plane was a prototype for many similar examples, many of which are still in operation elsewhere in Europe, and modern versions of boatlifts using the same ballast principle are also working on the big canals in Belgium, for example.

On a more basic level I was taken by my uncle when visiting with my cousin to see the strange Trinity three-way bridge at Crowland in the Fens. Now stuck on a traffic island, it originally spanned the river Welland and a tributary that was later re-routed, leaving this very curious structure from the 1300s just, well, sitting there. It was an ingenious way of spanning the rivers and saved building three separate bridges and provided much joy to me as a child rushing up and down the different exits and entrances.

Trinity Bridge, Crowland, Lincolnshire

I have written before about some of these oddities but always as individual items.

Another is the almshouses in Clapton, east London that had the smallest (claimed) consecrated chapel in the country. Sadly the almshouses have now been sold off and turned into small houses, including the chapel. I lived nearby and this was always a place to stop and wonder at. No one I know ever got in to see the chapel which was a shame, but it was there. My great grandfather lived in the house the other side of the road behind the chapel, so I saw a lot of the place.

http://davehill.typepad.com/claptonian/2014/09/what-will-take-the-almshouses-place.html

During the mid seventies/early eighties we lived in Essex not far from Billericay. It was brought to my attention that there was a rather special hospital out near the village of East Hanningfield: it was a leper hospital. Hard to believe that something like that would exist in the UK but there it was, a few miles up the road. The hospital itself was just a series of low buildings, many of the prefabricated variety. The hospital still functioned up to ‘86 and although there was nothing remarkable about the place it did have its sad side: there existed on the other side of the road its own graveyard. Its history was quite interesting.The second part of this account is the best description I have found of the place.

http://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/jordan.html

Severalls Hospital had a reputation for being haunted. As a mental institution it was a rather foreboding place on the outskirts of Colchester. Despite being a mental hospital it did have some general wards and other facilities, and for better or worse I was sent there by my GP for a review of something I have now forgotten. I had no idea what the primary purpose of the place was but later when it closed all was revealed. Later after many years of dereliction, part was demolished and housing built on the site but certainly until recently - and maybe still - it was a decaying memorial to another age, and became the haunted relic of old. Many photographers have found a way in and many photographs have been taken of the eerie place, as examples show here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415036/Severalls-Hospital-Edwardian-mental-asylum-Colchester-patients-held-50-years-demolished.html

The last place of interest in one that I came across on the south coast near Brighton just a couple of years back. Pure chance meant that someone had told me of a well that was very deep in the area, there is little to see other than capped top but the history is very interesting. The Woodingdean Well is the deepest hand dug well in the world, a quite astonishing achievement: the six-foot-wide well finished up deeper than the height of the Empire state building. It is difficult to believe that humans could dig something like that, and all initially to save money and employ people at the local workhouse: no benefits without work, it was that simple. So old young men and women, all with candles for light, embarked on this amazing project. It didn’t have the desired effect of saving money but they carried on regardless.

Woodingdean Well, Brighton and Hove, East Sussex

https://www.wellmasters.co.uk/well-history/woodingdean-well/

Depth and geological layers, Woodingdean Well

Humans of course are a rich source of the odd eccentric and downright loony. When I was in my late teens / early twenties I used to travel to work in central London by bus and tube. The tube I caught was Manor House station near Finsbury Park, and it was here that I saw what appeared to be a hoax. At first I laughed and forgot about it but the man involved was not indulging in a hoax, this was the real thing. As regular as clockwork with all the other commuters he would turn up on the platform dressed in a double-breasted raincoat, shirt and tie, hair slicked back and was to all intents and purposes a toned-down version of Arthur English (the post war comedian, if anyone can remember).

But there was a difference: in the middle of his forehead on a suction cup he had a kitchen tap - I do not make it up - and as he appeared every morning on the platform he would shout the words “Everyone is on the tap!” a reference in cockney to the phrase "tapped up" i.e. wanting something, usually for nothing. I have never found out what he was about but there he was, as regular as clockwork, getting on the tube with his tap on his forehead. He must have been going somewhere, perhaps to work, who knows? He may have been a plumber. The mystery was never solved.

Ras Prince Monolulu was an institution from the thirties on, a racing tipster who would not only frequent the tracks with his cry “I Got an 'Orse!” but also attended Petticoat Lane market on Sunday mornings in full regalia and shouting his lines as in this video:



and here with Groucho Marx on "You Bet Your Life" (from 15:56 on):



They don’t make em like that anymore…………...

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny, by JD

This week's music comes from the streets of New Orleans with Tuba Skinny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuba_Skinny

Their leader, unofficially but musically everything seems to revolve around her, is cornet player Shaye Cohn. She also plays piano and violin among other things. She is also the granddaughter of Al Cohn who was one of a quartet of tenor sax players in the Woody Herman band. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Cohn



















Like? More here! -

http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/2014/09/tuba-skinny/

World War One: two snippets

From Phil Baker's biography of Dennis Wheatley:

"The RFC [Royal Flying Corps] was still in its infancy, having only just got past the stage of using hand-held revolvers in aeroplanes, but it was now rapidly expanding. In May 1915 it comprised only 166 planes in total, but within eighteen months it was losing fifty planes a week. Parachutes were not issued; senior Army staff believed pilots would try harder without them." (p.100)

"The man who commanded Wheatley's division, General Sir Oliver Nugent, had boasted that a double decker London omnibus would hold all the men he intended to bring home alive." (p.139)

Lest we forget.

Boxed in: BoJo opposes burqa ban, gets hounded by bien-pensants!

The controversy continues...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/

“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” 
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

"Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."
 ― Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides

FRIDAY MUSIC: Two Sisters (Ravi's Daughters), by JD

The late Ravi Shankar is remembered as one of the best-known proponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and he influenced many other musicians throughout the world. He was also the father of two daughters who have also been successful in their very different musical careers:

Norah Jones was born in 1979 and became a jazz singer and pianist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Jones

Anoushka Shankar was born in 1981 and followed her father in learning to play the sitar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka_Shankar

I suppose it was inevitable that these two half-sisters would eventually record together and with their father so here is a selection of their music, both individually and together.

A "finest hour": Operation Pedestal

Mortally wounded, the Ohio staggers into Valletta

August 1942: Malta remained a thorn in the side of the enemy, who had been besieging the island since June 1940. Rommel had said in 1941 that unless Malta fell, North Africa would be lost to the Axis.

Disastrously, in September 1941 the US Embassy in Cairo had been secretly burgled by the Italians, who copied the code book; and the "Black Code" had also been cracked by the Germans soon after, so the enemy were reading translations of the American reports within hours of transmission.

In June 1942 two British supply convoys had been sent - Operations Vigorous and Harpoon - and owing in part to the intelligence intercepts were successfully attacked, with heavy losses to our side.

By the August, then, the situation in Malta was desperate, and another large convoy was put together under Operation Pedestal. As well as food and - crucially - fuel, the flotilla carried a squadron of Spitfires that took off once past Gibraltar and headed for the island via a circuitous route to evade trouble. These planes would be key not only to the defence of Malta but to future attacks on Axis forces in North Africa and Sicily.

Young Battle of Britain veteran and Pedestal participant Geoffrey Wellum noted that because of the need to carry extra fuel for the long flight, the Spitfires' ammunition was removed and replaced with rations of cigarettes - good for the defenders' morale!

The squadron got safely to Malta, and waited.

West of them in the Mediterranean, fourteen merchant ships and thirty-eight ships of war including four aircraft carriers came under an intense air and submarine attack that had begun even as the Spitfires were taking off. The Navy lost a carrier (the Eagle), two light cruisers and a destroyer, and nine merchant ships went down also.

But the Ohio* got through, carrying 10,000 tons of fuel oil and saving the island's capacity to defend itself. She only just managed to get into the Grand Harbour, severely damaged and with a destroyer lashed to either side of her, sinking even as her cargo was being pumped out, subsequently breaking into two and having to be towed out to sea and scuttled by naval gunfire.

Fourteen ships sunk, thirty-four aircraft destroyed, hundreds dead. But a gamble that paid off.
_____________________

*Requisitioned from her resentful US owners after reaching the Clyde in Scotland. She had arrived there on 21 June 1942, only three days after the C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, looking at the recent failures of Operations Vigorous and Harpoon, had cabled Churchill to advise against another attempt to breach the Malta blockade.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tiddely-Prom, by JD

More from the BBC Proms:

This evening, 3rd August, on BBC4 it is the folk music of these islands which is the focus of attention. So a preview of some of the artists taking part, all of them first rate. No doubt there will be others but that is the great joy of the Proms, they always deliver delightful surprises and excellent music.