David’s Blog

Regular blogistas will know that my favourite English City is the “City of the Dreaming Spires” the university city of Oxford. With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford’s museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year. For me from all this abundance of riches one of my favourite places to visit is what has been the somewhat forbidding and eccentric Ashmolean Museum. (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-in-oxford.html )

At its opening in 1683, the Ashmolean was the world’s first ever public museum, a beacon of learning for a newly scientific age. Over the centuries, as an integral part of the University of Oxford, it has remained at the forefront of modern thinking on how museums can best foster learning, while giving enjoyment and inspiration to the widest possible audience. In the best tradition of Regency “Cabinet of Curios” it has always contained popular attractions like the Guy Fawkes lantern to recent acquisitions like the restored Titian painting “The Triumph of Love.”

The renovated Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology re-opens to the public on Saturday 7 November. The award-winning architect Rick Mather has designed a new building, replacing all but the Grade I listed Cockerell building. The redevelopment cost £61m, doubling the existing gallery space. The new building, designed by award-winning Rick Mather Architects, will provide the Ashmolean with 100% more display space. Located to the north of Charles Cockerell’s original Museum built in 1845, it comprises 39 new galleries, including 4 temporary exhibition galleries, a new education centre, state-of-the-art conservation studios, and Oxford’s first rooftop restaurant The Ashmolean Dining Room. In the Cockerell Building, the newly refurbished galleries of Western Art will reopen after 10 months of closure.

Behind its classically pedimented exterior the Ashmolean was strange design for the entrance led you to expect something huge and dramatic behind but the reality was a museum only one gallery deep where parts were immersed in a stygian gloom. Rich Mather’s clever extension addresses this and much more with all galleries now leading onto a bright atrium. These changes mark the latest upgrades to the UK’s oldest public museum, with its origins dating back to the early 17th Century.

The original museum of 1683 was based on the collections of Elias Ashmole, alchemist and antiquarian, a leading figure of “The New Philosophy”. It was literally a “cabinet of curios”, including a Dodo, artefacts acquired from credulous Native Americans and hand-me-downs from the Tradescants. Ashmole explained that his purpose was to encourage “the inspection of particulars… extraordinary in their fabrick”. By the early 18th century it was already a busy popular museum.  Elias Ashmole was an aficionado of antiquities who studied at the University of Oxford whilst posted to the military there. He was one of the first gentleman freemasons in England and had wide ranging interests including astrology and alchemy.

He liked to collect coins, metal, books and manuscripts and he apparently possessed the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone (one of the great alchemical secrets). Ashmole was also a founder member of the Royal Society, interested in the study of nature and objects and their application to the benefit of mankind.

But the choice of his name for the museum is not without controversy.  David Berry, project curator of the Ashmolean tells the full story: “The museum opened to the public officially in 1683 but its history is traced further back.  “The collection that was its core was compiled by two John Tradescants, father and son. They were gardeners to Charles I, and in the late 1620s John Sr took out a lease on a house in South Lambeth.  1634 is the first recorded instance of a visitor having seen that material.  It was really the first instance where a collection of that sort - what would be referred to as a Cabinet of Curiosities - was made accessible to the general public regardless of age, gender or status.  That is unique to them and one of the things that Ashmole inherited. It became a key foundational element of the Ashmolean when it opened here in Oxford.”

“The Ark”, as it was known, caught Ashmole’s attention when he purchased the house next door: “He had an interest in the Tradescant collection.  In 1656 he paid for and was in large part responsible for helping to compile a catalogue of it. It was the first printed catalogue of a museum collection or a collection of any sort in England.”  Many people make the comment that it should rightfully be the Tradescant Museum as opposed to the Ashmolean - it’s an interesting point

When John Tradescant III died at an early age, in the absence of an heir the future of the collection seemed in jeopardy. In 1659 the collection was passed to Ashmole by Deed of Gift.  But it seems that John Tradescant the Younger regretted this, and he left everything in his will to his wife. This led to a court case upon his death. The deed proved valid and Ashmole won the case. In 1657 Ashmole began negotiations with his former university. A museum was built on Broad Street (now the Museum of the History of Science). It opened in 1683 and housed the Tradescant collection.

“Ashmole is very often vilified for his role in this,” David Berry continues. “Many people make the comment that it should rightfully be the Tradescant Museum as opposed to the Ashmolean. It’s an interesting point.  “The bulk of the material that he donated and that arrived and was open to the public had a Tradescant provenance.  Ashmole was a major collector in his own right but quite a bit of that burned in a fire in his chambers in Middle Temple.

“But the institution is entirely Ashmole’s. It was through his influence that the university was persuaded to build the building.  Ashmole gave it its proper philosophical foundation. He provided it with a series of statutes by which it was to run. In a sense the right name is on the front door. The collection in terms of what survived is largely Tradescant’s and Ashmole was actually quite clear about that in his correspondence with the university.  He also donated all of the family portraits. We have a dozen or more portraits of the members of the Tradescant family which all very clearly say on them ‘Donated by Elias Ashmole’. He would not have done that had he not intended for their legacy to be preserved as well as his own.”

Over the years the museum rapidly began to run out of space. In the mid 19th century the university’s collections were subject to a “process of rationalisation”. The museum was originally conceived to represent the world in microcosm, crossing cultures, times and disciplines (the epitaph on the Tradescant tomb even reads “a world of wonders in one closet shop”). But in the quickly developing 19th century, the sciences were dividing into many different disciplines and the collections had to expand in line with them.

Eventually the 1860s saw the natural history collections transferred to Parks Road where they formed the core of the University Museum - now the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Once the Tradescant collection was moved to the Pitt Rivers Museum in the 1880s the museum was left with something of a crisis of identity.  David Berry describes the museum’s new change of direction: “the focus shifted almost entirely to the area of archaeology. The museum began to acquire significant holdings of material from Egypt, the Near East, from throughout Continental Europe as well as archaeological material from throughout the British Isles and the classical world.”

By this time the University Galleries, housed in a neo-classical building in Beaumont Street, had been displaying many fine examples of paintings, sculpture, drawings and prints. The treasures of the Ashmolean, which had outgrown the space on Broad Street, were moved to an extension at the back of the newer building.  It was in 1908 that the two institutions amalgamated to form the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. This is the museum we have today, albeit now with a new and improved modern makeover

Inside the new galleries, the Ashmolean presents a redisplay of the collections. The Museum’s curators have worked with leading design company Metaphor to create the innovative strategy Crossing Cultures Crossing Time, enabling visitors to discover how civilisations developed as part of an interrelated world culture. Objects’ stories will be told by tracing the journey of ideas and influences through time and across continents, transforming the way the Ashmolean’s rare and beautiful objects are understood.

Themed galleries on the lower ground floor explore the connections between objects and activities common to different cultures, such as money, reading and writing, and the representation of the human image. The floors above are arranged chronologically, charting the development of the ancient and modern worlds. Orientation galleries on each floor introduce the key themes, illuminating the many connections and comparisons which bring the past to life.

Strangely for a University City Oxford has been somewhat bereft of good restaurants, one exception has been the excellent Brasserie Blanc in the atmospheric Oxford canal side district of Jericho. http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/brasserie-blanc.html

This may sound surprising but every college has its dining hall where Fellows and Scholars sit down to “Commons” and every college has its Student Buttery. The Oxfordshire squirearchy for their part largely stay in the county frequenting country taverns and Blanc’s exquisite Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons at little Milton. This leaves Oxford City itself abandoned to the chains, fast food and tourist specials. Two honourable exceptions have been the excellent operation in the crypt of St. Mary’s University Church and the Ashmolean Café.  The Café features freshly-baked pastries and organic yoghurts for breakfast and a range of tasty sandwiches, soups and salads for a light lunch. Highlights from the cakes and desserts menu include the orange and almond cake and wholesome muffins made each morning at the benugo bakery. The bakery offer is exceptional. A new addition in the renovated museum is The Ashmolean Dining Room which provides the spectacular setting for Oxford’s first rooftop restaurant.

Now the Ashmolean is pretty much uncontested as the greatest university museum in the world. The fact that this enchanting museum is also an active seat of research and scholarship only adds to its lustre, while the reality of seeing so many objects – squirreled away for too many years – out on display will make the Ashmolean a museum to return to, time and again. Go and see the reborn Ashmolean soon, an exceptional place in an exceptional city.

See also; Xmas in Oxford

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/xmas-is-coming.html

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.html

Take a trip to your local branch of Prêt a Manger and the chances are you’ll be made aware of their “fresh ingredients” boasts. So the news that the high street chain is importing frozen chicken from Brazil may come as a surprise to you as it did to me. I used to greatly admire Prêt whose headquarters is in Hudson Place beside Victoria Station. It was set up by two college friends with its first shop in Victoria Street and in the early days Julian Metcalfe’s parents kitchen in their flat near Westminster Cathedral supplied the shop. They aimed to shake up the British sandwich market. However McDonalds bought a 33% share in 2001 (since sold last year at a considerable profit to Bridgepoint Capital) and there was concern that they would lose their ethical edge. These concerns now seem to have been borne out.

The chain which boasts its ingredients are ‘the best, natural stuff’ has come under fire for importing frozen chicken from Brazil. The meat in Prêt a Manger’s ‘Just Made’ chicken sandwiches is frozen and then shipped more than 6,000 miles to the UK. The £200million-a-year firm says it uses the South American chicken because the animals are treated well there. It claims the meat is produced in better ‘animal welfare’ conditions than those employed by companies which supply rival sandwich makers.

Sourcing chicken from the South American country is cheaper for British companies than using UK meat, with wages for workers typically 700 reais a month – that is about £250 a month or £3,000 a year. “Conditions are not great, but they could be worse,” said Eurides Silva, the president of a local food workers union. On top of their wages, workers will typically get a free basket of basic food in exchange for a 44 hour week. There is no health plan while cases of repetitive injuries among the mainly female workforce, who spend all day stripping chickens by hand, are common.

“There are lots of repetitive stress injuries to the wrist, the elbow and the shoulder,” said Mr Silva, “It’s repetitive work and fast. There are also a lot of muscle problems. Some companies have stretching exercises and gymnastics to help workers be more limber but a lot don’t want to bother. It isn’t ideal, if you want to avoid having these kinds of injuries.” Workers, he said, also bemoan conditions in the processing plants where the temperature has to be kept around 14 degrees and so “it is cold and wet and that is a common complaint”.

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, the body that certifies organic food in the UK, is scathing of the mass market chicken industry that has grown up in Brazil, using limited grain and Soya supplies to fatten up chickens. Mr Holden said: “It is out of sight and out of mind. We are living off unsustainable chicken systems and we are not facing up to the inconvenient truth that our addiction to white meat has to be confronted.”

When it arrives in the UK, Prêt’s Brazilian chicken is defrosted, marinated and poached before being used in a range of sandwiches such as coronation chicken, simple Caesar chicken and chicken and red roasted peppers. The company earned £8.6million last year from its range of chicken products. Although there is no suggestion that the imported meat is harmful to health, campaigners have raised concerns at boasts that it is fresh.

The revelation comes a week after it emerged the chain’s ’spankingly fresh’ sushi was in fact frozen in Chile and shipped in. This outraged environmentalists, who warned of the huge carbon footprint this created. Prêt, which has built its reputation on ‘good natural food’, is not required to state on food labels where its meat is sourced from. Packaging on its chicken range says: ‘Just Made (never from a factory). A fresh Prêt sandwich doesn’t need a “use by” date. We make our food in every Prêt kitchen using amazing ingredients. The best, natural stuff you’d want to use at home.’

On its website it boasts that its chicken is never processed more than needed. Corinne Low, of the British Standards Trading Institute, said the wording was misleading as the government’s Foods Standards Agency counted anything which has been frozen as having been processed.  She said: ‘The term “fresh ingredients” should only be used where its intended meaning is no processed ingredients have been used.’

Robert Newbery, the chief poultry advisor to the National Farmers’ Union, said: ‘Processed meat should carry clearer labelling to encourage people to buy British.’ Brian Young, director general of the British Frozen Foods Federation, however, claimed meat producers here could not meet the demand. Britain shipped in 143,000 tons of cheap chicken, the equivalent of 60million birds, from Brazil and Thailand alone last year.

Yesterday Pret’s co-founder Julian Metcalfe pledged that by 2012 Prêt would sell only British free range chicken - which costs on average three times more.  Mr Metcalfe said: ‘People should buy less chicken or buy proper chicken. We have got to move free range by 2012. This is about bigger issues than the word “fresh”.’

I’m amazed that “fresh food” Prêt-a-Manger with “nothing bad in it” imports frozen chicken from Brazil which it then defreezes, poaches and marinades before putting in its “made in the shop” sandwiches, imports frozen crayfish from China and, most amazing, its “Fresh Sushi” frozen, yes frozen, from Chile! Maybe the most amazing thing is I’ve paid them £3.80 for a chicken sandwich!! - NO MORE, NO WAY!!!

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/pret-manger.html

Rarely can there be a group as worthy of support as this (The Tayto appreciation society on Facebook) - I had to join as in an increasingly transient world the continuity and happiness provided by Tayto is important!

My life and Tayto have crossed on two occasions, both in a previous life as a VAT inspector in Dublin.

In the early 80’s I’d to call on a chipper called “CeeBees” in Parnell Street in Dublin - This was a strange operation as it only opened Monday to Friday from 12 to 2 and from 4 to 7, not the normal trading hours for a central Dublin chippie! It turned out it was owned by the Collins Brothers (CeeBees, geddit?) who had founded King Crisps and having sold it to Tayto for, then. good money, found themselves bored with time on their hands and ran this dilettante chipper just to have something to do. They were two gentlemanly old guys (well late 50’s) who told me the story of how they started King Crisps in Inchicore using a chip shop range to do the frying. Here I was in the presence of crisp royalty, the guys who had started doing individual batch fried handmade crisps! Tayto never did much with the King Crisp brand afterwards and when you see the huge success brands such as Kettles (and Tyrells) have made of the same idea it seems to have been a marketing opportunity lost.

Incidentally afterwards I visited the state of the art Tayto plant in Coolock and noticed that their purchases include parsnips. It turned out for 3 months in late winter / early spring potatoes were in short supply and not of good quality so they substituted parsnips instead. I was incredulous and said surely customers noticed? As Tayto had invented the method of flavouring crisps he said there was no real difference in taste and no, they had never received any customer comment! Considering what an upmarket premium product root vegetable crisps are today I was surprised he told me the second advantage of using parsnip crisps is they were cheaper!

Whilst reviewing the momentous history of crisps it should be remembered that when Mrs. Smith made her crisps in the 1920’s in her garage in North London they were mainly sold from a handcart by her husband Frank Smith (as in Smith’s Crisps) to an Irish Clientele in the pubs on Kilburn High Road.

The Irish and Crisps – they go together like Ham and Cheese, Jordan and Pete, Bread and Butties, St Kevin and Women, ………………………………….

Mr Tayto

Tayto was born in 1954, when Joe ‘Spud’ Murphy invented the first cheese and onion flavour crisp! In those days, Tayto would sell 347 packets per day. Nowadays, Ireland’s favourite crisps sell around three-quarters of a million bags per day. The factory now operates out of Tandragee Castle, where it is possible to take tours. Who wouldn’t want to see crisps being made IN A CASTLE? Plus, there’s a chance you might even get to meet Mr. Tayto himself. Wowzers!

Tours run from Monday to Thursday at 10.30am and 1.30pm, and on Friday at 10.30am. The Tayto Factory is closed on public holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, Bank Holidays etc. The price for adults is £5, students and seniors is £4, and the price for children is £3. The tours are regrettably not suitable for children under 5.

www.tayto.com

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/tayto-proper-irish-stuff.html

Hallowe’en seems to have grown around the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. All Hallows’ Eve, has over the years moved from the Celtic Festival of Samhain to trick-or-treat. Samhain was the time of the final harvest of the beasts of the field, and the crops, in preparation of winter provisions, the eve of Winter’s first day, and the beginning of the next Wheel of the Year.

Samhain was in part a sort of harvest festival, when the last crops were gathered in for the winter, and livestock killed and stored. But the pagan Celts also believed it was a time when the walls between our world and the next became thin and porous, allowing spirits to pass through. The practice of wearing spooky costumes may have its roots in that belief: dressing up as a ghost to scare off other ghosts seems to have been the idea.

To the Celts Samhain marked one of the two great doorways of the Pagan Year, the other being Beltane on May 1. They held a ‘dumb’ or ’silent’ supper in remembrance of those who passed over, placing a setting of food and drink for them at the family dinner table, or just simple cakes and wine.

In medieval Ireland, Samhain became the principal festival, celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara, lasting for three days. After being ritually started on the Hill of Tlachtga, a bonfire was set alight on the Hill of Tara, which served as a beacon, signalling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to light their ritual bonfires. The custom has survived to some extent, and recent years have seen resurgence in participation in the festival.

The name Hallowe’en is a shortening of All Hallows’ Even, or All Hallows’ Evening. All Hallows is an old term for All Saints’ Day (Hallow, from the Old English “halig”, or holy, compared with Saint, from the Latin “Sanctus”, also meaning holy, or consecrated).  In the original Old English, it was known as Eallra Hālgena aefen. This comes from a Christian move by Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV to end the pagan Samhain festivals, by moving the feast of All Saints from May to 1 November.

There is a long tradition of the Christian Church taking other’s iconography and calling it their own! They even took the History of the Jewish People and called it the Old Testament. They took over the Basilicas of the Cult of Mithras which, like Christianity, had at its centre redemption through blood sacrifice. When they took over the Roman Basilicas after Constantine the Great made it the state religion of the Roman Empire they replaced the statues of Jupiter with those of Christos (The anointed one – a title used by the Pharaohs of Egypt as in Ptolemy VI Eucharistos on the Rosetta Stone) and changed the inscription from “J.O.M.” (Jovis Omnia Maximus) to “D.O.M.” (Deo Omnia Maximus). They even kept the gold disc behind Jupiter which represented his position as the Sun God (Helios) and depicted their images with the “Halo” as a sign of sanctity. So the Nazarenes have some form in this area, indeed after celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in early summer for the first 400 years or so they then purloined the Roman Feast of Saturnalia on the 25^th December near to the Winter solstice which was associated with feasting and merriment. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD) recorded that some Christians of the time placed his birth date in April (see Stromata I:21). Hippolytus (d. 236 AD) may have believed that Jesus was born on April 2^nd.

The celebration of Halloween survived most strongly in Ireland. It was an end of summer festival, and was often celebrated in each community with a bonfire to ward off the evil spirits. Children would go from door to door in disguise as creatures from the underworld to collect treats, mainly fruit, nuts and the like for the festivities. These were used for playing traditional games like eating an apple on a string or bobbing for apples and other gifts in a basin of water, without using your hands. Salt might be sprinkled on the visiting children to ward off evil spirits. Carving turnips as ghoulish faces to hold candles became a popular part of the festival, which has been adapted to carving pumpkins in America.

The classic Hallowe’en jack-o’-lantern, a carved grinning pumpkin, is both a new and an ancient practice.  Originally, it seems to have come from an old Irish legend of a man called Stingy Jack, a miserly farmer who played a trick on the devil and as punishment was cursed to wander the earth, lighting his way with a candle inside a hollowed-out turnip.  When the tradition moved to America pumpkins were used instead of turnips, as they were both more available and easier to carve.

So this Halloween, as we Trick and Treat, let us acknowledge the contribution of the Pagans of Ireland to popular culture not to mention 100s of terrible Halloween B Movies!! Watch out for the Ghosties and Ghoulies and ‘tings which go bump in the night!

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/halloween-another-great-irish-pagan.html

Though we take it for granted, and frequently curse it to high heaven, the London Underground is a wonder. The Tube network is the oldest and longest underground railway system serving a major city. Its history goes back to 1863, its conception even earlier.

For the full story see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

The Tube has driven engineering developments and creative design. It has featured in countless books, songs, films and poems. It has been the site of births and deaths, and bombs planted by everyone from pre-war anarchists to suffragettes, the IRA to the Islamist suicide bombers of 2005. Yet this venerable railway system keeps going, keeps growing and keeps enabling more than one billion Londoners a year to make their daily commute.

Here, extracted from David Long’s The Little Book of London Underground, are some facts to fascinate about the Tube.

A Metropolitan tunnel visionary

In 1845 Charles Pearson, MP and Solicitor to the City of London, proposed alleviating congestion for London’s 250,000 commuters by inventing an “arcade railway” underground in the shallow tunnels of what was once the bed of the Fleet River, from Farringdon to King’s Cross. Pearson, who never received a salary for his endeavours, also proposed rehousing 50,000 City slum dwellers in seven new suburbs, and redeveloping the land they vacated to offset the cost of the new railway. Sadly, Pearson died a month before his vision became a reality in 1863.

Earl’s Court goes up in the world

The first escalator on the Underground was installed at Earl’s Court in 1911. A one-legged man, “Bumper” Harris, was employed to ride on it and demonstrate its safety. Unlike modern “comb” escalators, the original “shunt” mechanism ended with a diagonal so that the stairway finished sooner for the right foot than for the left. Anyone not wishing to walk on the escalator was therefore asked to stand to the right to allow others to pass, leading to Britain’s unique flouting of escalator etiquette which dictates in most countries that escalators tend to match the rules of the road.

No dead ends on the Jubilee

In 1926, “suicide pits” were introduced beneath the tracks because of a rise in numbers of passengers throwing themselves in front of trains. Uniquely, the eastern extension of the Jubilee line — the only line on the London Underground to connect with all others — features glass screens to deter “jumpers”. They also ensure platform edge safety and stop litter being sucked into tunnels, the major cause of tunnel fires on the Underground. Still, approximately 50 passengers a year kill themselves on the Underground.

Torture comes full Circle

The Circle line opened in 1884 and was described in The Times as “a form of mild torture which no person would undergo if he could conveniently help it” – Conservative papers are still pro Public Transport! Conditions haven’t improved much in the intervening century or so, with a House of Commons report published in 2004 claiming that commuters face “a daily trauma” and “intolerable conditions” on the Tube.

The Northern’s highs and lows

The Northern line includes the deepest tunnel (at Hampstead) and the highest elevation (the Dollis Brook viaduct) on the line to Mill Hill East, the only part of the pre-war extension to Elstree actually built. Its ticket office at Bank was originally situated in the Crypt of St Mary Woolnoth. The first crash on the Tube occurred on the line in 1938 when two trains collided between Waterloo and Charing Cross, injuring 12 passengers.

Early birds catch the Piccadilly

The Tube runs 24 hours a day only at New Year and major events — such as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics — because most lines have only two tracks, one in each direction. It closes at night for cleaning and maintenance. The earliest trains, such as from Osterley to Heathrow on the Piccadilly line, start from 4.45am, with the rest operating by 5.30am and continuing until about 1am.

Digging deep for the Victoria

The Victoria line was built to link King’s Cross, Victoria and Euston and proposed names included Viking line, for Victoria to King’s Cross, and Walvic (Walthamstow to Victoria). Tunnelling close to Buckingham Palace and major government departments, 2.500 miners excavated an estimated one million tons of earth, uncovering fossilised marine molluscs and human bones from an old plague pit along the way.

New arrival on the Bakerloo

In 1924, the first baby was allegedly born on the Underground, on a train at Elephant & Castle on the Bakerloo line. Twenty years later, US TV host Jerry Springer was born at East Finchley station, where his mother had taken shelter from an air raid. The Bakerloo line was the creation of two notorious wheeler-dealers, James Whitaker Wright and an American Charles Tyson Yerkes who ran the Underground from a suite at the Savoy Hotel where he had installed his mistress! Builders working on it suffered from the bends while tunnelling under the Thames. Yerkes owned one of the larger art collections in the United States and was reputed to buy ‘old masters’ as others would buy books. The combination of his mastery of financial manipulation and his love of the arts was instrumental in bringing together this unlikely partnership on a railway network. 

London was ripe for the skills of Yerkes at the turn of the century with the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway virtually moribund in 1901 when its own financiers, the London & Globe, went into administration. Yerkes soon formed a holding company, the Underground Electric Railways of London Ltd, and the Bakerloo was soon joined by, what are now, the District and the then unbuilt Piccadilly Line and west end branch of the Northern Line (the Hampstead Tube). 

Grand Central passengers

The inaugural journey of the first Central line train in 1900 had the Prince of Wales and Mark Twain on board. The tunnels beneath the City curve dramatically because they follow its medieval street plan to avoid paying building owners for “wayleave rights”. The Central line also introduced the first flat fare: tuppence, hence its nickname the “two penny tube”.

Distance no object for map genius

Harry Beck produced the first version of his famous diagrammatic Tube map while working as an engineering draughtsman at the London Underground Signals Office, and was paid 10 guineas (£10.50) for his efforts. He believed that once underground, passengers were less bothered about relative distances between stations — the blueprint for the original Tube maps — and more interested in how to get from one station to another and where to change. First submitted in 1931, his map was considered too radical but the public embraced it and it became official in 1933. Beck’s design classic has been altered many times since; last month TFL was forced to return the River Thames to a new “decluttered” map after outrage over its removal.

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/01/great-british-design-quest.html

Ah, look at all the familiar buskers

Busking has been licensed on the Tube since 2003, but before that Sting and Paul McCartney both allegedly plied their trade on the Underground, in disguise as did Cat Stevens before he was famous.

Every tile tells a story

The tiles at Leicester Square depict film sprockets; Baker Street has Sherlock Holmes, Oval cricketers, while Eduardo Paolozzi’s abstract mosaics at Tottenham Court Road celebrate musical Denmark Street. The owners all faced the same problem - how to maximise the illumination of their gloomy gas-lit platforms. The only answer until then was masses of plain white reflective tiling. However, by the turn of the century, with electric lighting improving all the time, thoughts of something more than functional resulted in stations having unique polychrome tile decorations. The tiling of over 90 tube platforms, and associated passageways, staircases and surface-level booking halls, probably amounted to the largest single creation of decorative art on public display anywhere.

Perchance to Dream …..

One of the most satisfying moments on a crowded Tube Train is when suddenly you stop thinking of the Aussie controlled haversack banging into you every time its owner moves or the blast of sound from the zombie commuter with the ridiculous headphones unconscious of your presence. Between the strap hangers your eyes alight on a Poem on the Underground cab card and as you read you are transported to a different place where there are fields of daffodils, floating clouds and babbling brooks. You have discovered, been delighted and most possibly gone on your way happier because of one of the most successful Public Art programmes, London’s famous “Poems on the Underground.”

Poems on the Underground were launched in 1986. The programme was the brainchild of American writer Judith Chernaik, whose aim was to bring poetry to the wide ranging audience of passengers on the Underground. Judith Chernaik, together with poets Cicely Herbert and Gerard Benson, continue to select poems for inclusion in the programme which provides relief and interest to the commuters who make over 3.5 million journeys on the Underground each weekday.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/06/poems-on-underground.html

Tragedy stubs out smoking

A discarded match was thought to be the cause of the King’s Cross fire in November 1987 which killed 31 people. The blaze started in a shaft by a wooden escalator serving the deep-level Piccadilly line and spread to the ticket hall above. Although smoking had been banned on Tube trains three years earlier a similar ban was not enforced on platforms or within stations. The escalator running track was covered in grease and rubbish, causing flames to spread rapidly. Smoking was then banned throughout the Tube network.

Everyday warning for city folk

The recording of the phrase “Mind the gap” dates from 1968, and is voiced by Peter Lodge, who owned a recording company in Bayswater. He stepped in apparently when the actor hired to record the lines insisted on royalties. There have been several books, a gameshow, two theatre companies, several films and lots of songs called Mind the Gap. While Lodge’s recording is still in use, some lines use recordings by Manchester voice artist Emma Clarke, while commuters on the Piccadilly line hear the voice of Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in The Archers.

For the full story see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/mind-gap.html

Famous logo still doing the rounds

In 1908 the Tube, while not yet a unified service, was officially rebranded as the underground and the “roundel” logo was adopted. The bar-and-circle was used as part of the name boards at stations and the distinctive red and blue design enabled them to be easily identified. By the example it set under Frank Pick the Underground was gradually able to change the public’s attitude to railway stations which had been seen as shabby and inhospitable places. Sir Nicholas Pevsner wrote that Pick saw in every detail a “visual propaganda” and he used this not only to improve the Underground but the environment as a whole. Charles Holden brought the Underground station to the forefront of modern architecture: This achievement is unequalled by any other transport company before or since.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/give-my-regards-to-55-broadway.html

Lonely outposts south of the river

Less than 10 per cent of Tube stations lie south of the Thames. There are two reasons; The London Clay south of the river made tunnelling more difficult and the Southern railway electrified using third rail to increase service times and frequency to stop the (then) private Tube companies encroaching on their territory. They also built the “Drain” now the Waterloo and City Line to connect their main terminus with the City of London. This line was only transferred to London Underground in 1993. They also co-owned the Baker Street to Waterloo Line (Bakerloo Line) to connect Waterloo Station to the West End of London and later another railway, the LMS from Euston, extended this line over its network to Queen’s Park and Watford Junction.    

7/7: London’s date with terror

On 7 July 2005 a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks during the morning rush hour killed 56 people and injured 700. Three bombs exploded within 50 seconds of each other at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King’s Cross and a fourth exploded an hour later on a bus in Tavistock Square. The attacks by four suicide bombers on the London Transport system on 7th July 2005 were the largest mass murder in Britain in peacetime killing 52 passengers on The Tube and on the No. 30 bus at Tavistock Square and injuring 800 more, many seriously. Injured or not, and serious or not all who lived through the experience carry vivid and unsettling memories. There is a curious obscenity about suicide bombing, about the personal fascism which rationalises killing yourself and complete strangers you have first looked in the eye because you have convinced yourself it is for a greater good. There is a particular perversity, if you have religious faith, in destroying what you believe are God’s creations because you have appointed yourself as God’s representative and indeed have convinced yourself that shortly afterwards you will be personally thanked by Him.

See also:

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/london-77-bombings-memorial.html

Just squeaking into the records

An estimated half a million mice live in the Underground system. Unfortunately they are a protected species as they have fast tracked evolution to adapt to the environment – They have done in 50 years what Mr. Darwin said they would do in 500 years. Unfortunately they have become famous giving rise to an animated feature (Tube Mice – 1988) and “Underneath the Underground” a series of books by Anthea Turner (remember her?) and her journalist sister, Wendy.

Camera, lights, action stations

Famous “ghost”(i.e. disused) stations include Aldwych, British Museum, Down Street, King William Street and Lord’s and are used many times a month as sets for films or TV programmes, although none featuring vandalism, firearms, fare evasion, smoking, terrorism or nudity. Lots of stations have closed down, but are still sitting there in a strangely unnerving way (unnerving, anyway, for anyone who has seen Quatermass and the Pit). They are: Aldwych (closed 1994), Blake Hall (1983), British Museum (1933), Brompton Road (1934), City Road (1922), Down Street (1932), Lords (1939), Marlborough Road (1939), Ongar and North Weald (1994)South Acton (1959), South Kentish Town (1924), St Mary’s (1938), Uxbridge Road (1947), White City (1959) and York Road (1932).

 Bet you Didn’t Know This!

Croxley, the first station outside Zone 6 on the Metropolitan Line is the only station to contain the letter ‘X’.

The original Jubilee Line extension went from Charing Cross through Aldwych to New Cross on the East London Line. Indeed, 100 metres of tunnel was built at Aldwych for this purpose - then the project was dumped. So the Picadilly isn’t the only line to have abandoned tunnel at Aldwych after all. Wowzer.

St. Paul’s on the Central Line used to be called ‘Post Office’.

The District Line used to run alongside the Piccadilly to Hounslow Central before the Heathrow extension was built and the section diverted to the Central terminus at Ealing Broadway.

Some of the foregoing is taken from;

The Little Book of the London Underground, by David Long, £9.99

The rest is taken from a very dark place!

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/londons-wunderground.html

I first went to Prague in 1998 and this was the first time I had returned 11 years later in 2009 for the 20^th Anniversary of the velvet revolution which cast off Communism.  I was nervous about returning for when I first went I was bowled over by the sheer magnificence of Prague but also by the welcome, after so many years cut off they really made visitors welcome and they were a talented and engaging people who relished freedom. I remember the taxi driver who turned off his meter to bring us the long way around and show us where they had blown up the statue of Stalin in 1962. There were the string quartets playing in the street, the foaming steins of beer which cost 50p and much more. But it was a country in transition and much of downtown Prague looked shabby as ownership of buildings was being sorted out and there were a few examples of the “Rosa Kleb” school of customer service. Well now Prague has certainly developed and is no longer cheap, indeed some items are clearly overpriced but it has lost none of its magical quality. We had some wonderful experiences from seeing Don Giovanni in the Estates theatre where Mozart premiered it 222 years ago this month, to hearing a wonderful recital in the amazing Baroque splendour of the Franciscan Church, to touring Prague in a vintage open top 1932 Praga car and to hearing some great jazz on the Jazz Boat whilst watching the wonderful riverscape on the Vltava. And the Czech people are as genuine and as engaging as ever. It is good to see people who relish their freedom and have embraced it with open arms. In 1938 Czechoslovakia was the only democratic country in Eastern Europe and it was betrayed by appeasers of the Nazi Racist State.

When I went there in 1998 the people were clutching their new found freedoms with a vengeance, a talented proud people in this the capital of Mittel Europa and the only democracy in eastern Europe pre-war whose people found themselves cruelly betrayed in the aftermath of World War II.

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included “the mother of cities” (Praga mater urbium, or “Praha matka měst” in Czech), “city of a hundred spires”, or Stověžatá Praha in Czech and “the golden city” or Zlaté město in Czech. Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the political, cultural, and economic centre of the Czech state for more than 1100 years. For many decades during the Gothic and Renaissance eras, Prague was the seat of two Holy Roman Emperors and thus was also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.

Today, the city proper is home to more than 1.2 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 1.9 million. Since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, making the city one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, receiving more than 4.1 million international visitors annually, as of 2009.

The Municipal House (Obecni Dum) is the premier Art Nouveau building in Prague and was completed in 1911. On 28th October 1918, the historic proclamation of the independent state of Czechoslovakia took place here. Situated on the site of the former Royal Court Palace, Municipal House is the main attraction on Republic Square which is just a few minutes’ walk from both the Old Town Square & Wenceslas Square. On the outside, this stunning building has intricate stone work, gold trimmings, stained glass windows and magnificent frescos. Inside, Municipal House is divided into several areas. It hosts some of the best classical concerts in Prague, there are regular exhibitions, and it houses the first-class Francouzska Restaurant.

On our last morning in Prague in 1998 we had arranged with our driver to go to the Petrin Hill to take in the vista of this inspiring city; Hradčany, the castle district, on a hill above the west bank; Malá Strana, the 13th-century ‘Little Quarter’, between the river and castle; Staré Mêsto, the gothic ‘Old Town’ on the Vltava’s east bank; adjacent Josefov, the former Jewish ghetto; and Nové Mêsto or ‘New Town,’ (new in the 14th century), to the south and east of Staré Mêsto and straddling through it all the Vltava River, the Czech Republic’s longest river. It was here Tereza, in the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” , by Milan Kundera  climbs the grassy Petrin Hill “On her way up, she paused several times to look back: below her she saw the towers and bridges, the saints were shaking their fists and lifting their stone eyes to the clouds. It was the most beautiful city in the world.” But “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” first published in a French translation from Czech in 1984, is no love letter to the city; it is a message from a time of oppression, and one worth carrying for perspective on a trip through Prague. Milan Kundera submerges the reader in the undercurrents of political life, the rough passages of far-too-recent vintage and the personal repercussions of an invasive, claustrophobic time. Tereza is climbing Petrin in a dream — a dream in which she will be executed, but only if she convinces the executioners that she seeks death of her own free will. The novel returns again and again to Tereza’s harrowing dreams, simultaneously erotic and morbid.

The driver told us he was taking us on a diversion and we looked at each other nervously for stories and warnings about unscrupulous taxis are legion in Prague. By the Vltava he stopped and asked us to get out and cross the road to see a plinth where a statue used to stand. He explained to us that this is where the Czechs had blown up a statue of Stalin years previously in 1962 and how proud he now was to be able to welcome us to a free city. Only those who have lost their freedom once can really appreciate what it means to be free.

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/unbearable-lightness-of-being.html

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/images-of-prague.html

It is not just in the UK that politicians have been found to have had their snouts firmly in the expenses trough. More details about expenses incurred by Irish Politician John O ‘Donoghue have been disclosed this morning as the Ceann Comhairle (Speaker of the Irish Parliament) gives in to mounting public pressure and outrage and resigns. The news comes after considerable public outrage at an expenses scandal at another Irish Government, FAS, which say the “disgraced” chief executive leave with a Euros 1.1 million pay off and a side deal where a prestige car was secretly given to him as a leaving gift. In addition the Irish Taxpayer has been left holding a Euros 90 Bn. Bill for toxic property loans made by Irish Banks. The construction and property industries in Ireland have virtually collapsed leading to severe economic contraction and the wry joke that the children’s character “Bob the Builder” has to be renamed, he is now just called Bob. Public stoicism at the economic downturn has turned to widespread anger as the lifestyles of now bankrupt property plutocrats are laid bare and by revelations that Sean Fitzpatrick, the MD of the now nationalised Anglo Irish Bank had illegally and covertly borrowed more than 100 m Euros from the bank. He invested this in a whole rag bag of businesses including a bar in Las Vegas. He is now not paying the interest on the loan and like many of the loans made in Boomtown it is now largely irrecoverable.

Against this background the public has been very unforgiving as details of O’Donoghue’s taxpayer funded lifestyle have been exposed by requests under Ireland’s Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation. Reports this morning say documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that Horse Racing Ireland picked up bills of more than €20,000 on behalf of ministerial delegations led by Mr O’ Donoghue to nine international race meetings between 2003 and 2007. Horse Racing Ireland is partly funded by a direct grant from the taxpayer. The latest revelation follows several weeks of Sunday newspaper articles detailing lavish expenses claims by Mr O’ Donoghue while he was Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism. The Ceann Comhairle also revealed last Friday that he has claimed more than €100,000 in expenses since taking on his new job in 2007, including more than €90,000 incurred during trips abroad.

The move comes after months of high-profile media coverage of his expenses. A total of €216,334 was claimed for expenses between June 2007 and June 2009, including about €89,000 on foreign travel. On St Patrick’s Day 2008 and 2009, Mr O’ Donoghue attended celebrations in Washington, Houston, New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston in the US at a cost of €27,074. He also spent €13,227 on flights between his constituency in Kerry and Dublin and more than €124,800 was claimed for adverts in local Kerry newspapers, phone calls and secretarial services and miscellaneous expenses. The cost of VIP lounges in Dublin and other airports such as Paris, Lisbon, Hong Kong and Singapore, totalled €4,461.

Mr O’ Donoghue claimed €3,474 for gifts while abroad - a “proportion” of which were used on the official visit, according to his record. More than €2,930 was spent on official entertainment, including €330 for a party of five at the Butte Chaillot bistro in Paris and €705 on a lunch in honour of Tourism Ireland and France Group. In a statement from the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament), a spokesman repeated earlier claims from Mr O’ Donoghue that his office should carry the same privileges as a Government minister. “Similarly, items of expenditure including use of executive facilities or security are the customary courtesies that Ireland provides whenever it hosts an incoming parliamentary delegation,” the statement said.

“When the Ceann Comhairle travels abroad, it is normal that arrangements made are on the recommendation of the host, giving due regard to criteria such as security and proximity to the venues or to accommodate meetings.”

Details of his claims (including reclaiming a £1.00 contribution to UNICEF) are on this excellent Irish Blog.

http://www.gavinsblog.com/

The craw thumping justification on his resignation today issued by the official Parliamentary Press Office is a worthy sick making example of the genre;

“In indicating his intention to step down from the office of Ceann Comhairle, John O’ Donoghue TD, acted in the best interests of Dáil Éireann, and the office of Ceann Comhairle. He has been a most effective and fair Ceann Comhairle who has acted with commitment and integrity to ensure that the members of Dáil Éireann could debate freely and fairly the issues of the day.”

“The Ceann Comhairle has indicated that he wishes to make a statement to the House next week, I respect his right to do that. I thank him for his contribution to this Dáil as Ceann Comhairle and I wish him well for the future.”

Or as the long suffering Irish Taxpayer would summarise it; “Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/no-expenses-spared.html

In the bad old days before Gerry Adams Gang aka Gerry and the Peacemakers discovered Peace, Love and Understanding one of the more disreputable aspects of the IRA (In Ireland these things are relative) was the euphemistically named “Fundraising Activities.” Indeed these crypt-fascists masquerading as Republicans were the greatest beneficiaries of Partition running numerous rackets in the border areas of Ireland relating to smugglings, fraud on EEC subsidies, diesel rackets etc; Indeed it was never obvious where private gangsterism and “The Cause” began and ended as many fine houses and “businesses” owned by Republican hard men in border areas testify.

Now the group of Neanderthals known as the  Real IRA were last night being linked to the largest ever haul of contraband cigarettes in Ireland, in what Gardai described as a significant strike against organised crime. Nine people, including seven Irish nationals, were arrested after a ship “Anne Scan” containing 120 million cigarettes worth €50m was seized in Co Louth following a massive surveillance operation.

The haul, with a potential revenue loss of €40m, was destined for the Irish and UK markets. Regarded as the biggest seizure of its type in Europe and described as organised crime on a global scale, the contraband was uncovered after the chartered ship arrived at 6am on Monday at Greenore Port. Code-named ‘Samhna’, the operation, which targeted an organised crime group operating on both sides of the Border, involved the Revenue Customs Service, the Naval Service, Air Corps, Gardai, the Criminal Assets Bureau and PSNI officers and HM customs officials.

When customs officers searched the cargo, they found over 1,400 bags containing up to 120 million cigarettes hidden among a consignment of animal feed. While the top quarter of each of the one-tonne bulk bags of feed was genuine, the rest were packets of two brands of cigarettes including Palace, which are sold in Britain.

Seven Irish nationals, all male, aged between 19 and mid-40s, one Lithuanian male in his 50s and one Ukrainian male in his 40s were arrested after part of the ship’s cargo was loaded early yesterday onto waiting trucks. Gardai and customs officers pounced when the convoy was driven to the importer’s premises.

Last night, the men, who included the ship’s captain and first officer, were being detained at Garda stations in counties Louth and Monaghan. The Real IRA have funded their terrorist activities partly by smuggling along the Border and by operations bringing material into Ireland. In 2003 a large haul of cigarettes was seized as a Real IRA cigarette smuggling ring was smashed when warehouses in Holland and the Ireland were raided.  Six men were arrested after consignments of cigarettes worth millions of euro were found in the searches.

As part of follow-up searches more cigarettes were found in a warehouse in Monaghan. In another incident Gardai and the US authorities investigated links between the terrorists and a major cigarette smuggling ring in the United States. The seizure in Greenore is significant as this port at the end of the Cooley Peninsular (along with Heysham in Lancashire) was built by the LMS Railway based in Euston Station as part of a Rail / Ferry connection to Ireland and Greenore still has Euston and Crewe roads and the remnants of a once fine railway hotel as visible evidence of this connection.

The Cooley Mountains form the setting for “An Tain Bo Cuailgne” or “The Cattle Raid of Cooley”. Recounting the heroic defence of Ulster by the legendary Cuchulainn against Queen Medbh of Connacht and her attempt to seize the prize brown bull of Cooley, the story is at least 1,200 years old and is among the oldest surviving pieces of vernacular literature in Europe. This very beautiful part of the world has suffered greatly from IRA “fundraising” over the years including the murder of a local farmer, Tom Oliver, and the burying of bodies of IRA murder victims. One of these was Jean McConville, a 37 year old Catholic mother of 10, who was abducted from her home, St. Judes Walk, Divis, Belfast, around Xmas 1972 when Gerry Adams was commander of the “West Belfast Brigade”. She was accused of giving water to an injured British soldier. Her remains were eventually recovered, on general instructions from the IRA, buried at Shelling Hill beach, near Carlingford, Co. Louth, on 27 August 2003.  

And consider those who suffered from the euphemistically titled “fundraising” which enabled Gerry and the Peacemakers pay for their comic strip patriotism. There was Thomas Niedermayer, the German managing director of Grundig’s Belfast factory where IRA Godfather Brian Keenan once worked who was kidnapped for ransom and whose body has never been found. Of course Brian was not there that wet dark night at Greystones pier in Co. Wicklow some years later when his widow, still consumed with grief, walked off the end of the pier. He was however, in West Belfast when Grundig closed down with a loss of 900 jobs, but he wasn’t at Balinamore Wood in Co. Longford when the Army and Gardai rescued the kidnapped managing director of an Irish Supermarket chain but not before the fleeing IRA gang killed two 19 year olds, a rookie cop and soldier, as they broke out of the cordon. Nor did he know the girlfriend of one of them who worked for me who had a breakdown as her life and future were so cruelly destroyed.

So let us praise the security services for frustrating the Neanderthals of the so called “Real Ira” in their gangster activities and remember those who did not live to see the discovery of democracy by Gerry and the Peacemakers.  They are remembered on the Cain Index of violent deaths caused by the IRA and others who feel it is right to kill for “Freedom”.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html

According to the London Evening Standard a nightclub and banqueting hall are to be built inside a reconstructed Victorian monument at Euston station under plans announced today. The Euston Arch stood in front of the station from 1838 until it was demolished by modernist town planners in 1962.

Built at Euston Grove, the station was for many years the only north-bound railway exit from London. Designed in the classical style, the most notable feature was the massive Doric Arch entrance. Euston Station was one of the glories of British railway architecture it served as the terminus for travellers to London from Birmingham and the North West. Its architecture, based on Greek temples, was deemed a fitting gateway to the capital and an introduction to the engineering marvels of the railway beyond.

Euston Station was the first mainline terminus station opened in a capital city anywhere in the world. It was opened on July 20, 1837, as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway constructed by Robert Stephenson. The architect was Philip Hardwick who worked with structural engineer Charles Fox. The station first had only two platforms, one for departures and one for arrivals.

It was also Hardwick who designed the Euston Arch, a 70 feet 6 inches high Doric propylaeum, the largest ever built and which formed the entrance to the station. The grit stone structure complemented the Ionic entrance to the Curzon Street Station in Birmingham (which still exists) which was the other end of the London and Birmingham Railway’s mainline.

Its demolition, with the rest of Euston Station, was regarded as one of the greatest acts of Post-War architectural vandalism in Britain, the campaign to save it lead to the foundation of the Victorian Society and involved the indomitable Sir John Betjeman.

However British Rail’s cultural vandalism was worse than was realised even at the time. To block off any campaign to rebuild the Arch and despite an offer from the contractor to store the stonework British Rail demanded that it was all dumped and it has transpired the stones were thrown into a tributary of the river Lee in east London. This has now come to light as British Waterways has dredged the channel to salvage the discarded rock on behalf of the Euston Arch Trust as it carries out repair work to the waterways around the 2012 Olympic site.  The stones are being lifted from the Prescott Channel, where they were used to fill a hole in the riverbed. Campaigners want to reconstruct the arch using as much of the original stone as possible.

Demolition was speedy and brutal - as recorded in various newsreel documentaries - with the stones being broken and much damaged as the arch was speedily cleared away. The new station was opened in 1968. Designed in the International Modern style, its somewhat bleak style has been variously described as “hideous”, “a dingy, grey, horizontal nothingness”, “an ugly desecration of a formerly impressive building”, a reflection of “the tawdry glamour of its time” entirely lacking of “the sense of occasion, of adventure, that the great Victorian termini gave to the traveller”, and “the worst of the Central London terminuses, both ugly and unfriendly to use”. Writing in The Times, Richard Morrison stated that “even by the bleak standards of Sixties architecture, Euston is one of the nastiest concrete boxes in London: devoid of any decorative merit; seemingly concocted to induce maximum angst among passengers; and a blight on surrounding streets. The design should never have left the drawing-board - if, indeed, it was ever on a drawing-board. It gives the impression of having been scribbled on the back of a soiled paper bag by a thuggish android with a grudge against humanity and a vampiric loathing of sunlight”.

Today’s Euston Station is a forgettable exercise in 1960’s functionalism except for the small matter that it doesn’t function very well on a number of levels. The windswept prairie in front of the station was the ostensible reason for the knocking down the Great Hall and Euston Arch to enhance the commercial value of the development. It contains two nondescript office blocks. One, 40 Melton Street, was the HQ of the much unlamented Railtrack which was the infrastructure company created at rail privatisation in April 1994. The other office block, conveniently, contains the office of a firm of accountants who wound them up when Railtrack went into administration in October 2001. They have now been succeeded by Network rail who are in the same offices.

Now walk across the windswept prairie into Euston and judge for yourself this “functional” station. You will see an expanse of cold, black stone flooring and everywhere you will see passengers camped out on this cold surface for there are hardly any seats for the thousands who must wait here. Whatever coherence the concourse had has been lost by the mish mash of tacky kiosks and retail outlets as Network Rail ”adds value” by increasing rental returns at the expense of passenger convenience. Go into the food court and you will see a place overflowing with passengers looking for seats whilst they enjoy the fast food delights on offer. Pay to use the toilets which reflect the municipal toilet ethos of the rest of the station. Disabled? Well, don’t bother trying to access the Virgin executive lounge or the Britannia Bar on the first floor as Network Rail ignores here (as elsewhere) its legal obligations since October 2004 under phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Far better to leave now before you become too depressed and at the front onto Euston Road you will find all that remains of the Great Terminus which once stood here. In the centre is the war memorial and on either side are two decorative gatehouses with the destinations served carved into their quoin stones. These framed the Doric Arch and the only evidence of this is on the sign of the pub on the forecourt, ironic indeed as this was also part of the “commercial development” which required it to be demolished. Here too you will find the statue of the engineer for the lines into Euston, Robert Stephenson, known as the Father of the Railways. There is no history of weeping statues in front of train stations but as he surveys the mediocre morass for which history was swept away we could allow Robert a few tears.

Now the trust has unveiled a £10 million design to rebuild the 70ft arch on the original site with a nightclub in the foundations and lifts rising up the pillars to the banqueting hall, seating 80. Buses and taxis will be able to drive through it.

“The Euston Arch was a powerful symbol of the optimistic spirit of the Victorian railway. Its demolition in the 1960’s confirmed that blandness and lack of imagination had replaced the heroic vision of the past. Since then, the enormous popularity of the restored St. Pancras, soon to be followed by a restored King’s Cross, has shown that celebration of the past and potential for the future is not mutually exclusive. The restoration of Euston Arch would restore to London’s oldest mainline terminus some of the character and dignity of its great neighbours.”

Michael Palin, Patron of the Euston Arch Trust

The Euston Arch Trust has as its patron Michael Palin who I met once and whilst he is famous as a world traveller as well as a member of the famous Monty Python comedy team he broke into a smile when I mentioned that I had a copy of his first every travel documentary “From Euston to the Kyle of Lochalsh.” For Michael is at heart a Sheffield lad from a railway family so his commitment to trains and public transport goes back some time. As the Euston Arch Trust says on its site;

“Network Rail and British Land have announced that they will redevelop Euston Station in a £1 billion project. This is a golden opportunity to rebuild the arch and return to Euston, the local community, London and Britain a building of major importance that should never have been demolished.

The redevelopment of St Pancras station has already shown how a world class station can combine the old and new. Euston can do the same. The Euston Arch would be a wonderful gateway to the new Euston. “

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/st-pancras-reborn.html

Historian Dan Cruickshank, who has led a 15-year campaign to reconstruct the monument, described it as “the first great building of the railway age”. In 1994 Cruickshank discovered an estimated 60% of the 4,000 plus tons of the arch buried in the bed of the Prescott Channel at its junction with the Channelsea River that runs into the River Lea in the East End of London. A section of one of the columns was recovered from the river. The location of the rubble, for which he had been searching for 15 years, had been revealed by Bob Cotton, a British Waterways engineer, who stated that the rubble had been purchased in 1962 to fill a chasm in the bed of the Prescott Channel.

The possible rebuilding of the Euston Arch should throw light on another of the threatened glories of railway history because the Arch was one of two “bookends” the other being  the complementary Doric Arch at the other end of the line in Birmingham.  For in the Curzon Street Station you have arguably the oldest mainline rail terminus building in the world. It was here on 17th September 1838 that the first London to Birmingham train arrived at the very birth of railways. Built to the designs of Sir Philip Hardwick the architect of Euston Station, London, it echoed his magnificent design there which was so crassly demolished in 1962. It was designed in the style of a triumphant Roman Arch to echo his Euston Arch and provided two dramatic visual bookends to the first railway route between London and a major city. This Grade 1 listed building is currently unoccupied and at risk.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/birmingham-centre-of-england.html

The London to Birmingham Railway was the first rail service between two major cities and the muscular classical architecture was deliberately designed to give an impression of solidity and continuity to a public distrustful of this new fangled technology. They were visual propaganda for the technology which changed the world and made modern life possible and the propaganda was never more confident than Philip Hardwicke’s two magnificent emphatic statements of Victorian confidence announcing the new world to the citizens of London and Birmingham. Let us rebuild the Euston Arch and save Curzon Street station as two interlinked and priceless pieces of this great Industrial Heritage. Maybe when this is done a smile may cross the face of the “Father of the Railways” Robert  Stephenson whose statue in front of Euston Station has surveyed with a stern frown the architectural detritus which replaced the great triumphal entrance which met travellers to London.

See also:

The Great Circle Line Journey

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

Euston Arch Trust

http://www.eustonarch.org

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/euston-arch.html

“Tis a brave man who first eat an oyster!” so said my townsman Jonathan Swift Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and I’m in a position to verify many still feel this way for Oysters are like Marmite, you either love them or hate them!

It’s the luck of the Irish to have the world’s finest oysters on its shores; we are also privileged to have two highly successful Oyster Festivals in September each year, in celebration of the beginning of the native oyster season.  They are both held close to the Oyster Beds in Galway Bay, one in early September behind Paddy Burke’s Pub in the village of Clarenbridge and at the end of the month in Galway City.  As delicacies go, Ostrea edulis, our native oyster, it is a strange animal - it changes sex every so often, is highly susceptible to disease or poor water quality, and between May and August is, due to spawning, absolutely inedible. Come September, however, O edulis settles down and is ready to grace the gourmet’s gullet once more.

“What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?”

Anatole France (French Writer, member of the French Academy and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921)

Oysters have been eternally hailed as a precious gourmet delight by food lovers throughout the centuries, beginning with the Roman emperors who paid for them by their weight in gold. The Greeks served them with wine and the Romans were so enthusiastic about these marvellous molluscs that they sent thousands of slaves to the shores of the English Channel to gather them.

Their association with love is inexorable. The story goes that the word “aphrodisiac” was born when Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, emerged from the sea on an oyster shell and gave birth to Eros. Her charismatic lover Casanova also used to start a meal eating 12 dozen oysters. So, whether Oysters make people fall in love with each other, there are certainly many people who have fallen in love with Oysters.

Ernest Hemingway describes his love of Oysters:

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

The festival I was heading to was the one in early September which is somewhat smaller and more homely in the village of Clarenbridge. Created in 1954 and still going strong, this festival has become an integral part of life in the picturesque village of Clarenbridge in the south of County Galway. West of the village lies Dunbulcan Bay, where the oysters are produced - some say they are the best in the world. Protected by the bay from the force of Atlantic storms, the 700 acres of beds lie in an ideal mixture of fresh and sea water vital for perfect oyster development, taking from three to five years to grow for consumption. Over 100,000 oysters are eaten during the weekend celebration. The festival programme includes a market day, golf tournaments, yacht races, art and photographic exhibitions, a fine wine and gourmet evening, talks and lectures and the best-dressed-lady competition. The main emphasis, however, is on providing guests with a culinary experience that they will enjoy.  This is a tradition in existence since 1954 when the great Paddy Burke hosted the first Clarenbridge Oyster Festival.

 A lot has changed since the first festival but the philosophy remains the same. The Clarenbridge Oyster festival is a celebration of the native Oyster, of the history of the village and of the energy of a vibrant and modern day community respecting tradition. The Gala Day we attended on Saturday begins at 16.30 and ends after midnight so the 75 Euros ticket covered 8 hours of non- stop entertainment including the coronation of the Oyster Queen, Traditional Dancing, The Whiskey River Band and the Celebrity Beatles. This is not a commercial event run for tourists but a long running festival organised by a voluntary committee so after 55 years they must be doing something right. Around 1,000 attend the Gala Day and it has something of an infectious atmosphere in the main marquee, on the riverside terrace and the other outdoor areas. You are welcomed with a champagne reception and each ticket entitles you to the main event, half a dozen fresh local Oysters. As well as that the food offer is generous with chowder, seafood buffet, a hot dish, two glasses of wine and a hot meal in the evening. One criticism is that the wine was a sweet white wine which was all wrong; the seafood dishes required a dry white wine.

Niggles apart the food, drink and entertainment makes for a convivial and good humoured day and lively dancing on the dance floor by the time proceedings come to an end. Visitors might be surprised that this is not a dress down affair, indeed somewhat the opposite. The locals dress up to the nines and there is both a best dressed lady and gentleman at the festival, a hotly contested prize.  And one final note of gaiety; At the beginning of the festival the Irish Cannonball Run stopped by; 194 top line motors (Ferrari, Porsches, Rollers, etc) spending 3 days haring around Ireland!

On the way back to Clare next morning we turned off the main road just past Clarenbridge to Kilcolgan and headed towards another favourite watering hole and seafood emporium which overlooks the famous Oyster beds. Moran’s Oyster Cottage, The Weir, Kilcolgan, Co. Galway, dates back almost three hundred years and although Moran’s is still a family owned business, today it is run by Vincent Graham who has been with the Moran family for over 25 years. It is renowned the world over for its superb seafood which attracts people from the five continents, and is open all year round. With its picturesque thatch and menu of simple, high quality seafood served with good Guinness it has a devoted following from the days when of of the local inhabitants, film director John Huston, dropped in.

In the words of Raymond Rodgers of the London “Daily Mail”, “I came to Ireland in search of wild fowl, and found Moran’s, you have sparked life for me - never again will oysters taken with crumbly brown bread, washed down with foamy cream-headed pints of Guinness, ever taste the same. And your smoked salmon is the nature of Gods”.

Noel Coward has been here before me and had scribbled a couple of witty ditties on his napkin which is now an inscription on the wall at Moran’s Oyster Cottage which ends with an apt warning;

 ‘Tis long ago that Oysters were the pride of Moran’s Bar.

But when you eat the Oysters here today,

You know they still are.

And it will be forever so, in years they will taste the same.

And little children not yet born

will know why Granddad came.

So have another dozen, and then have another drink.

And thank the Lord for Oysters

- since it’s later than you think!’

Noel O’Coward

The Clarenbridge oyster bed is situated at the mouths of the Dunkellin and Clarenbridge rivers. It consists of 700 acres of sea-bed.  Oyster beds require a combination of fresh and sea water. Therefore they will only survive where a river enters the sea. If there is an excessive amount of fresh water, for example, after a season of heavy rainfall, the oyster will become too fat and open.

The Clarenbridge Oyster Bed is a natural bed. It is not cultivated in any way. The dredging season lasts from late November to the end of December. It is dredged every year by about 60 boats each having two people. These people would be local farmers. During dredging, oysters less than 3″ in diameter must be cast back into the sea again so that the stocks would not be diminished. Oysters are bought by about five local dealers - each of these would own their own private steeping ground. They in turn  meet the demand from restaurants in the area and the export market to France, England, etc.

Oysters have existed since pre-historic times. The Saxons enjoyed them before the Romans invaded Britain and there are those that would say it was for their excellent oysters that they invaded at all! Throughout their history, oysters have been regarded as a luxury but due to over-fishing the price dropped so low that at the beginning of the 19th Century they became the food of the poor. During the famine year’s people who lived near the sea survived on them. In about 1850, oyster culture started to become an industry and legislation in France and Britain protected the stocks.

Oysters are a bi-valve mollusc which means that they are shellfish with two hearts. Every year they change sex - in fact every other year they can be a father and mother to two separate litters in the same year! They feed by pumping 1-6 litres of water through their gills every day - the equivalent of a human drinking a large public swimming pool every day.

Ostrea edulis, the gourmet’s favourite, also known as the European Flat Oyster, is the oyster which is native to our Irish shores. Long ago there was an abundance of these oysters and they were a readily available source of free food during the Great Famine. The Romans also had a great love for the edulis oyster so much so that they used to pay for them by their weight in gold. Today Native oysters are considered to be a great luxury due to being a relatively scarce species. They are in season from September to April when there is an ‘R’ in the month.

So if you are in Ireland in September when there is first an “R” in the month go for the real thing, Native Irish Oysters at the Clarenbridge or Galway Oyster Festivals or enjoy them and other fresh Irish Seafood at Paddy Burkes in Clarenbridge or Morans of the Weir in Kilcolgan.

Clarenbridge Oyster Festival

Stradbally, Clarenbridge, County Galway, Ireland

Tel +353 (0)91 796 766.

Email info@clarenbridge.com

Website;  www.clarenbridge.com

Galway Oyster Festival www.galwayoysterfest.com

Paddy Burkes www.paddyburkesgalway.com

Morans of the Weir www.moransoystercottage.com

Oysters by Jonathan Swift

Charming oysters I cry:

My masters, come buy,

So plump and so fresh,

So sweet is their flesh,

No Colchester oyster

Is sweeter and moister:

Your stomach they settle,

And rouse up your mettle:

They’ll make you a dad

Of a lass or a lad;

And madam your wife

They’ll please to the life;

Be she barren, be she old,

Be she slut, or be she scold,

Eat my oysters, and lie near her,

She’ll be fruitful, never fear her.

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)

Original on Blogger;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/clarenbridge-oyster-festival.html