9/11 Where I Was Not

 On our first and my only trip to the USA, Rob and I spent a week in New York intending to be total tourists, before moving on to visit friends Stan and Jen in Medford Lakes, NJ.

If our original itinerary had worked out, we'd have been in New York and would probably have done the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building on the 9th September. Once actually there, the more enigmatic Empire State came first, but might not have done if it hadn't been closer to our hotel. This budget hotel had roaches in the shower and smelled mouldy, but that was ok, it was exciting, we were in the Big Apple!

Luckily, because of various minor complications like Stan and Jen being on holiday in the West Indies and because BA's discounted airmiles tickets weren't available when we'd originally planned to go, we'd reversed the order of our trip and went to Medford Lakes after New York. We never made it to the World Trades Centre and I am eternally grateful for those minor complications.

Watching the events on live TV, while in the safe living room of Stan and Jen's charming log-cabin home, on the shore of the lake, was terrifying. None of us could believe what we were seeing. 

We spent half the day frantically trying to phone home, to reassure our family in England that we were safe. All the mobile lines were completely overloaded and landlines weren't much better. Eventually Rob managed to get an email through to his father in Leeds and asked him to please phone my mother in Hastings to tell her we were safe. We carried on watching the inadequate TV reports while Stan managed to get in touch with his cousins in New York, who thankfully were safe too. 

Just as alarming was seeing that there was nobody on top of this. Politicians were panicking and TV channels had no known pattern, no appropriate template to follow, on how to report an event of this magnitude which was actually happening to their fellow American citizens, not people in far off lands of whom they knew little and cared less.

The pristine, primped and botoxed newsreaders unemotionally reported on whatever garbled messages emerged from the authorities, (with jollifying adverts) between distraught and panic-stricken vox-pops. The reporters were without a hair or tear out of place and the requisite toothy grins were still plastered on their shiny faces, their body language mocking the horrors they were failing to report in any meaningful way.

There was no information.

Later in the day I went alone for a swim in the lake, it was peaceful and temporarily soothing.

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I don’t deliberately try to mark 9/11. The stress (mine), the horror (everyone's) and the fear (the victims), is something I'd like to forget, although I won't. The only events which have come close to affecting me that much since are the horrific Grenfell Tower fire and most recently the impossibly hopeless evacuation of desperate people from Kabul. The only earlier event to have the same effect was, as a child, watching reports from Aberfan. I felt I was one of those children, experiencing that horror.

Where Have all the Lidos Gone?

Bathing Pool Poster

First of all, what is a lido? Is it anything more than a swimming pool? Strictly speaking, a lido can be defined as any open-air swimming pool or bathing beach. The word means beach or seashore, in seventeenth century Italian, from the Latin litus for shore. The Lido’s use as a word for a bathing place originates with Lido di Malamocco, the town on a long, narrow reef just to the south of Venice, where the sheltered, sandy beach was, and remains a popular resort for the wealthy and fashionable.

The 1930’s saw a wave of enthusiasm for lidos throughout the UK, both on the seashore and inland. Bathing and swimming were increasingly popular, seen as healthy activities for all the family; by the end of the decade there were around 170 throughout Britain. This was a whole movement and it was radically new. 

Bognor with bathing machines, from a nineteenth century postcard

During the previous 200 years, swimming had been regarded as an exclusively masculine activity. Women of the lower classes could frolic in the water, fully dressed, on female only stretches of beach, but nobody thought they could or should actually swim. Meanwhile wealthier ladies could immerse themselves by stepping from a bathing machine into slightly deeper water, whilst dressed in voluminous and impossibly impractical bathing costumes. They couldn’t swim either.

The decline of Victorian prudishness had an enormous effect, by 1901 mixed bathing was no longer actually forbidden in the by-laws of seaside resorts and so lidos could begin to evolve in the UK. For bathing enthusiasts a lido had to include additional facilities, especially an area for sunbathing which was increasingly seen as an additionally healthy activity. Most would also have somewhere to buy refreshments, at the least a tuck shop, while the most exclusive venues could have a high-class restaurant.  

Strand Pool, Gillingham, from a postcard

One of the earliest lidos was the Strand Pool at Gillingham in Kent. A local entrepreneur, Thomas Cuckow, realised an opportunity to creating a seawater bathing pool in the mud flats on the tidal shore of the River Medway. The pool used disused railway sleepers for shoring up and carriages as changing rooms. The incoming tide, filtered through sand beds, would fill the pool and it was emptied via a sluice gate. The pool opened in June 1896 with a special sports gala. The programme included underwater swimming, water polo matches and a greasy pole competition.

The Strand Pool prospered, once taken over by the town council in the 1920’s its facilities were increased to include a paddling pool, boating lake and park. Water filtration was improved and in 1935 concrete pools replaced the original muddy, tide-dependant pool. Strand Pool has always been locally popular and today, operated by Medway Council who have updated the facilities yet again, it continues to thrive.

​ But many more lidos have not survived. Even in the 1960’s almost every town had a pool of some description, but no longer. One, the huge bathing pool at St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex, was an ambitious design, on a grand scale by Hastings town engineer Sidney Little, with the Olympics in mind.

St Leonards Bathing Pool, postcard. It was never a financial success. 

By the 1950's it had become the main feature in a holiday camp.

The 1933 St Leonards’ pool was twice the size of the more stylish and upmarket Art Deco pool at Saltdean near Brighton, which was built in the same period. Both struggled financially. While the St Leonards pool only made a profit in its first year of operation and was finally demolished in the 1980’s, Saltdean has gained Grade II* listing and survived, by the skin of its teeth and through the vigorous activities of local enthusiasts.

At the opposite end of the scale, many mining villages in Wales acquired their own outdoor pools, when the local miners took time on their days off, during strikes and the redundancies of the depression to dig a pool for their own communities. All of these have been lost. The only historic pool of any note in Wales today is the Grade II listed Lido Ponty, in Pontypridd, which dates from 1927. Its Art Deco buildings and terraces were added in the early thirties.

Lido Ponty fell into disrepair during the 1980’s and was closed down in 1991. Its restoration, completed in 2015, was thanks to an EU-funded regeneration project. The restoration aimed to balance the conservation of the existing historic lido with the addition of a modern café, poolside terrace, visitor centre, multipurpose venue and dry play area.

So how many Lidos have been lost in the UK? Anne Green Jessel, a former competitive diver and international coach has a better answer than anybody. She has compiled an extensive, though not exclusive list on her fascinating website, https://www.lostlidos.co.uk, which lists 85 and counting, though she has counted them as a swimmer, not actually as lidos with extra facilities and her list includes some indoor pools.

Although too many open-air pools have been lost up and down the country, others do flourish and in a surprising variety of places. Greater London has eight lidos open to the public, including natural bathing in the Serpentine river in Kensington Gardens and the more structured, ever popular Tooting Bec lido which dates back to 1906. The newest pool in London was the Kings Cross bathing pond, opened in 2015 behind the station, however this was intended as a temporary installation and has now closed.

Hathersage Pool, Derbyshire was opened in 1936

There are also popular pools even in small villages, such as the beautiful lido in the village of Hathersage in Derbyshire. Hathersage has a population of only 2,000 but its proximity to the city of  Sheffield brings it plenty of custom. Being close to the county boundary, Hathersage pool has funding from both Derbyshire Dales District Council and the neighbouring High Peak Borough Council. 

Seaside towns in the British Isles may have larger populations than Hathersage, but many have fewer advantages to help financially. Some seaside pools, such as the spectacular Tarlair pool near Banff, which today is unfunded and fading into history. Tarlair is the UK’s most northerly lido, but has sadly become just a Grade A listed, art-deco ruin.

Other pool sites have been altered to accommodate year-round, indoor bathing. For example, in Rhyl the original open-air pool became the indoor Sun Centre, with slides and waves. After a second metamorphosis Sun Centre is now the SC2, which has re-introduced a limited amount of outdoor bathing alongside an indoor fun pool.

Tarlair Swimming Pool, 1930's postcard

Today the Northernmost properly funded lido in the UK is the Stonehaven Lido in Aberdeenshire, which has a fifty-metre pool with sun terraces and heated seawater. It’s run by Aberdeenshire Council in conjunction with the Friends of Stonehaven Open Air Swimming Pool. The Friends have become a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). A number of other pools also stay functional due to the considerable efforts of the voluntary sector.

Scarborough in Yorkshire has adopted a different approach. The brand new Alpamare Water Park, near the site of the former North Bay pool is a pricey, privately run and inelegant replacement for two beautiful seawater lidos. However if its heated fresh water, exciting water features, year-round operation and newly opened wellness spa gains more footfall and provides more employment than the old, cold lidos, it may benefit the town. 

Porthtowan Rockpool, Cornwall. Not really a lido, but wonderful!

The Westernmost lido is in County Down in Northern Ireland. The Tropicana consists of two shallow, seawater pools with slides, opened in the 1980’s and aimed at children. Further down the coast is the much deeper and rather Spartan, although locally popular Rock Pool which was built in 1933. Both are run by Down Council.

In England there are at least 15 successful open-air pools remaining beside the sea, and many more inland. These range from brand-spanking-new water parks to art deco masterpieces, more mundane bathing pools, paddling pools and tidal rock pools. A number of these pools stay operational with the enthusiastic efforts of the voluntary sector.

Imagination and innovation are needed to keep many going. For example in Cornwall is the spectacular art-deco triangle of Penzance Lido jutting out into St Michael’s Bay, Cornwall. It was opened in 1935 and named with great celebration for King George V's silver jubilee. Formerly run by the town council and now by Jubilee Pool Penzance Ltd, a Community Benefit Society. Jubilee Pool is currently breaking new ground with a bore hole being drilled to provide geothermal heating for the pool.

In Wales, no original seaside pools have survived but some have evolved into good sized paddling pools. One of the best is Blackpill Lido, run by Swansea Council. This is free and has a large splash pool, a baby pool and fountains, in a lawned area with play equipment, cafe and the start of the land train which runs along the front.  

Blackpill Lido, Swansea

 

Children gravitate towards waves, fountains, even puddles and as we have entered a more health-conscious era, similar to the 1930’s, the popularity of swimming pools and water-play areas is bound to increase, particularly at the seaside. Open-air pools encourage healthy exercise, saltwater ones may have additional health benefits over highly chlorinated ones and if sustainably heated, their seasons can be extended. 

The days of creating huge lidos with Olympic standard swimming pools are probably gone, but there should be opportunities to contribute to public health and amenity, attract holidaymakers and enhance the environment with new and exciting pools.         

                                                            *

Article and research by Susan Gilbert, Director of ArchiFACT Limited.                

The Full Gasometer

Here's the complete text of my article on Gasometers

Gasometer; The Rise and Fall of an Industrial Icon.

Is there a gasometer near you? If there is, take a few photographs for posterity because this iconic part of our industrial heritage won't be around for much longer. They were ubiquitous up until the 1960’s; nearly every UK town had its own gasworks, providing reassuring views of the accompanying gasometer as it rose and fell almost mysteriously in the middle distance. We were all very used to them, so their slow demise has hardly registered. Most stopped rising and falling from the introduction of North Sea Gas onward and today, gas arrives from elsewhere, coming ashore from the North Sea or across from Europe to arrive at one of seven UK processing terminals such as the one at Bacton in Norfolk. A few gasometers still rise and fall, but now they are simply used for temporarily balancing the system, not for providing the local gas supply.

This rather elegant lattice structure is part of Huddersfield's column-guided gasometer (or gas-holder), a familiar sight near the town centre just off the Leeds Road. Any fan who has ever ever attended a match starring either the Huddersfield Giants or Huddersfield Town F.C. and tried to locate the John Smith (formerly the Galpharm) Stadium will have either used the gasometer as a landmark to find their way, or parked in its shadow.

Strictly speaking this is the structure which supports the telescopic gas holder as it rises and falls according to how much gas is inside, sealed in by the water reservoir underneath. This column- guided, telescoping gasometer design was invented in 1824 to conveniently contain ‘town gas’ which was produced using coal. However well before this, a coal ‘gasification’ process was creating gas in useful quantities, which was kept in rigid containers and used for lighting in factories and workshops. These coal gases were far from pure, consisting of numerous substances including methane, carbon monoxide and sulphur, they went through purification processes to be reliably and safely useful.

Hastings Pier is Up and Running again

The 144-year-old Hastings Pier, originally designed by Eugenius Birch, and Grade II Listed since 1976, has reopened this year, eight years after closure and six years after the structure was almost totally destroyed in a devastating fire in October 2010. The blaze, thought to have been started by vandalism, destroyed the pier head ballroom, all of the kiosks and stalls, much of the decking and one of the two curved pavilions. No one has been prosecuted.

The revived pier, with restored 1916 pavilion to the left. 

Following the fire English Heritage assessment confirmed that the heritage value of the substructure remained, so an application was submitted for funding to the Heritage Lottery at the end of November 2010 to restore the substructure of the Pier and renovate the remaining pavilion. Heritage Lottery trustees visited the pier on 16 March 2011 to assess the application. Hastings Borough Council were granted £100k toward emergency works by to pay for structural supports to be applied to the central section which was weakened by the loss of the deck in the fire.

5 October 2010, the blaze destroyed most of the
structures on the pier and damaged the substructure

Auguste Endell, Architect of the Month, May 2016

August Endell was born on 12 April 1871 and grew up in Berlin. In 1892 he went to the University of Munich to study aesthetics, philosophy and art. Always an intellectual he became interested in the aesthetics of art and design and wrote a number of papers on the subject including 'On Beauty' in 1896 which can be considered an anticipation of abstract art. He befriended Jugendstijl sculptor and designer Hermann Obrist who influenced and encouraged him to move from academia.

A self-taught artist, Endell began working on translating his theories into architecture and the built environment and in 1896 received his first commission. Endell's design for the façade and interior of the Hofatelier Elvira, an existing building in Munich

Interior of Hofatelier Elvira 

which he embellished with typically turbulent Jugendstijl forms and motifs, made him famous overnight. The Atelier was to be run as a photographers' and artists' studio by Anita Augspurg and Sophia Goudstikker and was said to have been the first such business in Germany created and run by women. The building was vandalised by the Nazis and later destroyed by bombing during WWII.     

From 1898 Endell joined other artists and designers in the Munich arts and crafts movement where he became regarded as an innovative leader. He continued to publish articles and papers including in 1901 on "Originality and Tradition". At the same time he moved from Munich to Berlin which encouraged him to move from the flamboyance of Jugendstijl design and towards Modernism. He contributed to the design of the Theater Bunte, in Berlin Germany, which has since been destroyed.

Marine Art Deco Ashore - Picture of the Week 30 March 2016

Marine Court. 

This Art Deco style apartment block in St Leonard's-on-Sea - was deliberately designed to somewhat resemble an ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary. To describe Marine Court takes a combination of architectural and nautical terms. At the eastern end, the curved lower floors protrude like a ship’s bow and the floors above recede like the stacked decks of a liner. At the west end the balconies end in a graceful curl, leaving a gap at the stern. The architects, Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen, stopped short of adding portholes, but every seaward facing flat has a balcony. On a sunny day, residents may imagine they are enjoying a luxury cruise from the comfort of their own flat.

RMS Queen Mary sailed the North Atlantic Ocean between 1936 -1967 for Cunard White Star Line. She was built by John Brown & Co on Clydebank, Scotland and sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936. With the outbreak of the war she was converted to ferry soldiers for the duration of the war. After the war, the Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service and began the transatlantic passenger service for which she and her sister ship the RMS Queen Elizabeth were designed. They dominated the transatlantic passenger service until the jet age in the late 1950s. After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. She left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored. Much of the machinery, including one of the two engine rooms, three of the four propellers, and all of the boilers, were removed. Today the ship serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum and a hotel. 

Picture of the Week; Leeds first Gasometer

While researching for an extended article on gasometers for publication in QS Eye magazine, I came across this very early photo of an even earlier gasometer.

This stood beside the gasworks at Bean Ings Mills in Leeds and was probably built before 1800. Do you know of an earlier gasometer anywhere?

Bean Ings wool mill, owned by Benjamin Gott was one of the town’s biggest employers from 1790, with over 2000 workers. Gott engaged steam engineers Boulton and Watt to provide a steam engine for this woolen mill when earlier, water-powered mechanisms, which relied on water from the nearby canal, proved unreliable. Bean Ings Mill also acquired its own gasworks (one of the first ever built), complete with a rigid gasometer, so that Gott’s weavers could work by gaslight late into the night.

The exact date of this gasometer’s installation at Gott’s mill is unclear, but some years later, in 1800, much of the mill burnt down and Gott moved the enterprise to Armley. The gasometer must have lasted longer than that, for the photograph to have been taken as photography wasn't around at the time.

Today the site of the mill is home to the Yorkshire Post building at the end of Wellington Street.

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Photo found at :- http://www.leodis.net/discovery/discovery.asp?page=2003219_348858059&topic=200335_73055447&subsection=2003724_663265408&subsubsection=2003911_593959988

Salcombe and the Minton Tiles Mystery. Picture (s) of the Week, 23 August 2015.

Salcombe on the southernmost tip of Devon is a very pretty little town, but for the visitor who's already looked at the harbour, the lifeboat and the two or three small galleries there's not very much to do if you aren't really into messing about in boats! The crab sandwiches sold by local cafes are very good but not exciting enough as they don't last long.

Unexpected things do crop up though, if you look around. 


The view down Cliff Road towards Fore Street, the road

 is either narrow, or very narrow. One way traffic is in

force but anything bigger than a transit van would be in
trouble. Is this a clue to the unexpected Minton tiles?

Look up and you can see a procession of elegant corbel

supports to the overhanging roof. Described to me as a

'dental course', this row stops where it hits the doorway.

The only conclusion which can be drawn is that there

was once a one storey high front porch or lobby on

the house which has been removed, or was accidentally

demolished by a large vehicle.

Architectural detective work is fun!

Look down and just outside a front door

you can see these pretty encaustic tiles,

probably Minton, projecting out into the 

road, with the tarmac and yellow lines

beside them. This seems odd. Why would

the street be decorated with tiles usually

used indoors? The Salcombe climate may be mild, but pedestrians and vehicles

would quite probably damage them.

 

 





Historic Colt House, Bosham; Picture of the Week 23 May 2014

Going through old family photos I came across this one of my grandparents house in Bosham, Sussex, under construction. I've blogged about their house before, but at the time had few photos of it. This was a Colt house, partly pre-fabricated and constructed almost entirely of timber, apart from foundations and chimneys. These houses became very popular in the 1930's. Further research will, I hope, tell me exactly when this one was built, I've always assumed it was before WWII.

I spent large parts of my childhood in this timber framed and clad house. It had three reception rooms, four bedrooms, a lovely bathroom with separate toilet, a kitchen with a large, solid fuel Aga, a scullery and a front door which was at the back of the house - a gravel drive swept right around the side of house to this front door which in my lifetime the door wasn't used - the entrance lobby was used for storage! The photograph below shows the completed building in the 1950's. The French doors from the sitting room are open onto the brick patio, the windows to the right are in the dining room. The small porch to the right contained the main entrance and connected by a brick corridor to the coal bunkers and the large garage.

These and other photographs show a solid, unpretentious building with traditional tile hanging to the first floor and a clap-board clad ground floor, both imitate the local vernacular. The windows are metal framed, probably Crittal, the hanging tiles are actually cedar shingles, which over time mellowed to a soft grey and never needed painting, the clapboard was a creamy white.

Inside there was no plaster. Apart from dado height panelling on the stairs the interior had soft, fibreboard walls, wallpapered downstairs but not up. In a wind the house would creak and pop, but flexibility is no bad thing.

Window, Natural History Museum London. Picture of the week 23.02.2014

 

A beautiful window in Victorian eclectic style with Romanesque arches, elaborate mullions and plaques and statues representing animals, there are an eel, a snake and a  jackal below this window, but each window has its own unique creatures. The stone pilasters are covered with naturally occurring patterns such as crystals, tree bark, honeycomb and fish scales. The ornamentation is in cast terracotta, a material which was chosen partly to save money when the building was built between 1865 and its opening in 1881.

The architect, Alfred Waterhouse created the museum’s distinctive blue and buff colour scheme by tinting the terracotta clay with ground slate before it was fired. A shortage of materials meant he had to cut back on the amount of blue.

Lost Buildings 1 - Alexandria and Berlin

Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989
(photo from thecommune.co.uk)

All around the world, buildings vanish every day, as do other manmade structures. Some losses are notable. Nobody is likely to mourn the loss of the Berlin Wall, which for 28 years divided not just the city of Berlin but the surrounding countryside for 100 miles, before inexorable political change led to it being torn down in 1989.

On the other hand, the Ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was deliberately burned down by Christian fanatics in 391 AD after Emperor Theodosius outlawed 'paganism'. This barbaric act lead to the loss of a thousand years of learning.  It was only with the 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual translation, 22 years later, that the way to read the hieroglyphic writing of the Ancient Egyptians was re-learned.




The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2006 (my Photo)

I saw the Berlin wall as a teenager and happily re-visited, with my own children in July 1990, to observe its demise. There was some left then and I have a piece which I picked up from beside the Brandenberg Gate. And as if to celebrate a brave new world, in Egypt the Library of Alexandria, lost almost 1700 years ago, was finally replaced by a superb new library, designed in 1989 by Norwegian architects from the Olso and New York Snǿhetta practice.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Interior 2006 (my Photo)

This modern building, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which I was lucky enough to visit in 2006, is a beautiful low pyramid of glass and steel housing a multilingual library. It seemed popular and well used when I visited, I sincerely hope that Egypt's current political, religious and social disruption doesn't damage this beautiful and essential  repository of learning.  The Egyptian people deserve to live with education and erudition freely available and if it can remain associated with great architecture, so much the better.

Between the world famous extremes of the Berlin Wall and the Great Library of Alexandria, many smaller, less significant structures also fall, sometimes almost unnoticed and their loss is often nothing to do with either religion or politics. I'll talk about some of them in a week or two.

On the Job, new technology for old.

Technology moves on, as illustrated in this picture, taken earlier this year. The driver of the mini-digger is an expert in the use of both ancient and modern building technology, his preferred speciality is in stone work, he afterwards re-built the collapsing stone shed which was attached to the back wall.

In the nineteenth century, shovels like the sturdy one in the photo built the British canal system, created railway cuttings which we still use today and dug the London Underground network. In the twenty first century, things are a bit different - but as any builder or gardener knows, there are still times when only the humble shovel will do the job.

The shovel in the picture belonged to my grandfather. It must be at least sixty years old and it still works perfectly. I wonder how long that nice green mini-digger will last.

Shopping in Highgate (C1971) - picture of the week 18 October 2013

This was never the smart end of Highgate, it was the Holloway end. Even so this man was having difficulty keeping his temporary grocery going, at the time the area was infected with planning blight. However he stocked vegetables and fruit, a few cans and packets of staple foods, as well as bags of Winalot. He was proud of his shop and happy to have his photograph taken.
 
Much of the area of small Victorian terraces was later re-developed.

Haunted Ruins; Picture of the Week 24 August 2013

Ruins are always fascinating and great places for a photographer...

 

especially when accompanied by fighting knights...

and maybe the ghost of a young squire.


 
Conisborough Castle
 

Festival of Light; Pictures of the Week 12.12.12

Every year at the beginning of December, the centre of Huddersfield is brought to mysterious life in the cold evenings by the Festival of Light.



Interactive light installation in St.George's Square

An installation of burning lanterns lights up
St Peter's Gardens, by the Grade II listed Parish
Church of St Peter.

  







Acrobatic performance outside Huddersfield's Grade I listed
railway station. The Grade II listed George Hotel is on the right.

The festival was first held in the town only in 2006 and has become hugely popular, attracting thousands of visitors to watch and join in, with torchlight processions, live music, street theatre, food festival, daring high wire acts and fireworks to mention just a few of the highlights.

 

Coal Drops, Sowerby Bridge: Picture of the Week 15 November 2012

These coal drops in a railway siding beside Sowerby Bridge train station date from the 1860's. They were used by coal trains bringing fuel from the mines and many Yorkshire towns had them in Victorian times. The fuel wagons would be positioned over the drops, a large cart would sit below and the coal would simply be dropped into the cart, for distribution around the town. They were in use well into the twentieth century, though the coal was dropped into waiting lorries, not horse-drawn carts. There are similar coal drops still in existence at Halifax and Huddersfield, all are now Grade II Listed Buildings.

I like this photograph because of the parallel diagonal elements which indicate the direction & movement of the trains and the contrast between textures of stonework, timber and foliage.

Knife Grinder in Tripoli, Picture of the Week 24 Oct.2012

Here is another of my father's photographs, taken in Tripoli, Libya in the 1950's. I think he was particularly pleased with this picture, I've seen several copies of it over the years. It is a great image.

Photograph by John Sinclair Gilbert, C1955

Ruined Pier; Picture of the Week 16.10.12

A ruined pier, a sandy beach, but where?

The first mystery photograph for a while. One more clue, for what it's worth; I shot it in September 2001.


* Update  7 November 2012

The old pier was on the coast at Atlantic City, New Jersey. When I shot this picture, the landward end of the pier still had a pavilion on it. I haven't been able to find any pictures of this online, which means if any remained after 2001, it probably was probably washed away in the hurricane of 2012.

Rockefeller Plaza C1933, Picture of the Week 10.10.12

A remarkable photo shared by my friend Romy.

"Death Valley, Rockefeller Center, 1933 (50th and 6th)"

This is in the centre of Manhattan and shows the remarkable bedrock which has made it possible to build skyscrapers on Manhattan island. The rock is known as Manhattan schist. Schists are metamorphic rocks;

 "Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock types, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form". The original rock (protolith) is subjected to heat and pressure, (temperatures greater than 150 to 200 °C and pressures of 1500 bars^[1]) causing profound physical and/or chemical change. The protolith may be sedimentary rock, igneous rock or another older metamorphic rock." 
                                  from Wikipedia


This cliff face is now buried underneath the Rockefeller Plaza, so I have actually walked across it.
You can see more on a facebook page called 'Old Images of New York.'

London Zoo's Listed Building Problem

Zoos Ain’t What they Used to Be.
Modern zoos are not what they were even as recently as the 1960’s and this is a probably a good thing. I remember as a child being taken to see polar bears living in what looked like a concrete pit, where they had to endure baking sun with only a small, grey pool for their comfort, which seemed a poor substitute for the Arctic Ocean.



Mappin Teraces, 1972 photo by Sue Gilbert

This was at London Zoo, on the famous Mappin Terraces, which may have been architecturally innovative and apparently practical, providing a catchment for water to feed the aquarium below, but it was no place for a polar bear.

Constructed in 1913 in the newest fashionable materiel, reinforced concrete, the Mappin Terraces were jointly designed by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, secretary of the Zoological Society and Scottish architect John James Joass. The terraces were intended to simulate mountain scenery which it was thought would be a good backdrop for the display of bears and other creatures who could climb the rocks.  This illustrates the historic attitude; while London Zoo was established in the 1830’s as a collection for scientific study, the animals were on display to paying visitors by 1847 and though relatively well treated, their environmental requirements were not understood. Their primary function was to be an exhibit.

Today we know better, at least with some species, and there are no polar or any other bears at London Zoo, while its sister zoo at Whipsnade houses European brown bears in a large woodland enclosure. The now Grade II listed Mappin Terraces house Australian wildlife, emu, wallaby and others more suited to the arid, rocky environment. The only polar bears in the UK today live at the Highland Wildlife Park in the Cairngorms, where they roam in enclosures of several acres, with a lake and the climate is much more suitable for such Arctic species.