Category Archives: history

history, UK

Blenheim Palace

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With another gorgeous day present & me not participating in the rest of the weekend’s cycling events (a sportive on the road – pffft) – I had a whole day to get home in no hurry at all.  With family & friends absent from the obvious stopping point on the way home (Bristol) I started scratching around for something to go & see as I drove home.  Somehow I remembered that Blenheim Palace was not far off my route home (ten miles extra as it turned out) & I’d been meaning to see it one day as it was the birthplace of Winston Churchill and conceived to honour the first Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, after his famous victory at the Battle of Blenheim.

The grounds are extensive & well worth walking around on such a pleasant summer’s day.  I of course enjoyed the history throughout the house and just moseying around.  My little photos may be better than me rambling on…

The smell of all of the roses reminded me of my grandparents, but Colin St wasn’t quite the same sort of palace

around home, history, UK

Mottisfont

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Following the exertions of the day before, I had planned a day of sitting in the sun at the NZ vs England ODI cricket that I had just learned was in town.  However, fifty quid seemed a bit steep – as one can never be sure which NZ cricket team is going to turn up (the sublime or awful) – so I gave it a miss. That was quite a misjudgement with the Black Caps absolutely pummelling the English – a shame to miss that, but oh well.

Instead I had a relaxing couple of hours in the sun strolling around a National Trust property, Mottisfont, near Romsey.  The house was originally an abbey before the monasteries were dissolved – strangely, when the remains of it were granted to someone who was clearly in Henry VIII’s favour, a house was built around the abbey instead of demolishing it.  The old cellar is the most obvious of the 13th century remains.  In parts of the house there are holes in the walls & at the back of cupboards exposing interesting ancient features.

The grounds are extensive and have a lot of lawn.  I was there relatively early & by the time I left there were hundreds of cars in the parking lot – most of those seemingly belonging to the scores of families spread out picnicing, playing ball and generally just enjoying the sun.  There’s a big walled garden – alas, I was a couple of weeks too early to see the mass of roses that I’m told are very impressive (curses to that long, cold spring).

The font, still spewing forth a lot of water, after which the property is named – as the local residents used to meet here back when Old English was spoken and “moot” meant “meet” (say that last bit quickly repeatedly).

I forget what that smaller tree is, but it certainly was a mass of white.

The house was interesting enough & quite nice – the last owner was quite in to the arts & hosted many artists down from London. Consequently, there’s quite a bit of art around.  I did enjoy the watercolour exhibition until it started getting a little abstract.  The most interesting feature I thought was the small waterwheel on the ground floor that was used to turn some sort of pot spinning device over an extremely large coal range.  Also, doorways hidden behind bookcases are always cool.

A pleasant little outing, not nearly as tiring as the last one.

engineering, history, UK

Ironbridge

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With a fair chunk (more than half) of my working life spent making iron & my love of history, particularly industrial & engineering history, I was pretty pleased when I found that there is a World Heritage Site just west of Birmingham dedicated to one, if not the major, of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution.  Last weekend I finally managed to tie a visit to Ironbridge with some local riding.

It was here, in what was called Coalbrookdale, that iron was first made in blast furnaces using coke, not charcoal, as the reducing agent to strip the oxygen from the ore and leave pig iron.  Iron had been smelted in this part of Shropshire for centuries previously due to the ready availability of iron ore and limestone (necessary as a flux to remove impurities to the slag).  Charcoal had to be made rather intensively from carefully managed forests, so this always kept iron production low as trees take a while to grow.  It was a maker of brass pots, Abraham Darby, from Bristol who came to town, took over an old furnace & began experimenting with reducing the iron ore using coke – this was the early 1700s.

As well as cast iron pots, pig iron was also used to make boilers for steam engines, the first steam locomotive (Trevithick), rails for trains and iron for construction – it was interesting to see how such developments leading to our modern world were so intricately linked.  For instance, the blast for the first furnaces were provided by bellows driven by waterwheels – the water coming from dams behind the furnace.  This constrained the iron production in the summer months as the dams ran low – but as an improved supply of iron, from using coke, enabled more steam engines to be built, these engines were eventually put to use providing the blast for the furnaces.

There are the remains of quite a few old blast furnaces remains around the area & I enjoyed wandering around them & the Museum of Iron.  It was nice to read such words as blast, launder, flux, charge, tapped, cast, hearth, & rolling mill in the context I’m used to reading them.  I was also pleased to finally find out why pig iron is called so – something I’d occasionally wondered, but never enough to do anything to actually find out.  When iron from the early furnaces was tapped (released from the furnace to run out as the liquid it was), it ran along a narrow channel that branched out perpendicularly in multiple places to slightly larger openings where the iron was cast into ingots.   All these ingots were only on one side of the channel & they looked like piglets feeding from a sow – there you go, there’s something you didn’t need to know.

The hearth of the Old Furnace – that first used with coke.

An engine house on the left & charging floor up on the right.

Incline plane (two sets of rails on a steep hill)

A working replica of Trevithick’s locomotive

An old iron foundry relocated from Woolwich – you can just see the primitive rolling mill in front of the puddling furnace.

Kiln at the China Museum

The Tar Tunnel – while trying to open up a transport route between the Shropshire Canal & the Severn, bitumen was discovered.

While mostly exploited in the 18th century, some bitumen continues to ooze out of the walls.

I spent more time at some of the other museums in the area – Blists Hill Victorian Village is an interesting mostly-industrial themed historical park. Some of the features are original (blast furnace remains for example), but a lot of the buildings have been relocated from elsewhere. The clever inclined plane between the canal & river was quite revolutionary for its time. The problem was to connect the end of the Shropshire Canal, some sixty metres above, to the Severn. The tunnel, originally designed to link the two, struck tar – which made the tunnel more valuable as a source of bitumen, than a conduit for the tub boats used on the canal. The solution was two parallel railways on the very steep hill – where the heavier laden tub at the top pulled the empty tub up from the bottom as it was lowered.

I returned Monday morning to Ironbridge to avoid the sunny-Sunday-on-a-long-weekend-crowds to see the bridge around which the village sprung up & was named for. Abraham Darby III, the third in the ironmaking dynasty (there’s a term I never thought I’d pen), cast the iron for what was the first iron bridge in the world. Being the first bridge using the technology, they could hardly let it fall over & sink in to the swamp (river) – so it was vastly over-engineered keeping Darby in debt for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, it was a marvel of its time and drew visitors from all around the world to the see the new technology set amidst the heavily industrialised valley.

A most enjoyable part of the weekend wandering around in the sun looking at industrial relics – if you are so inclined, I recommend it; if you’ve managed to read this far, perhaps you are.

city, engineering, friends, history, UK

Belfast & Giant’s Causeway

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With the trip rearranged for a week later due to the UK being unable to cope with a little bit of snow, we eventually made it to Belfast this weekend gone.  A plan was hatched a few months ago over drinks with workmates that we should go on a weekend break before Bhupesh’s visa expired & he had to go back to India.  It may be the middle of winter, but I’m hardly going to let such a trifling matter get in the way of a trip somewhere new.

With all of last year’s trips under my belt, somehow it fell to me to organise everything – perhaps I was the only one motivated enough to do anything on the planning side.  It was great to have friends along for a trip for a change, but organising it all and making sure everyone is enjoying themselves (I’m pretty sure most don’t share my love of history) while still trying to make sure I get to do the things I want to was something I was not used to.  When the accommodation rebooking fell apart on the morning of our departure, I was not enjoying being sole organiser; but plenty of emails, phone calls and not small expense sorted that out eventually.  In the end, I’m sure no one had a bad weekend, I got to see most of what I wanted and managed to get sufficient time to myself (three’s a crowd & all that).

Apart from the last minute hiccup, airbnb worked out well again – where else can you rent a three bedroom house for forty quid a night?  The neighbourhood in South Belfast was pretty grim, but as always I found plenty of interest – and taxis were cheap & prompt.

All that was left standing of the terrace across from the front door – I suspect because this house (the blue bit) had some sort of memorial to a fallen soldier

It didn’t get much better across the next street – demolition and breeze-block windowed houses, classy

An old library on the walk to catch the day-trip coach

The recommended activity for the day was a trip up the coast to see the Giant’s Causeway, so that what I managed to convince all was a good idea.  The day dawned bright & cool, but the clouds soon rolled in.  Our driver/guide for day was recovering from illness & seemed determined to drag us all down with him as he had the air-con continually chilling us for the first few hours – I’ve never seen so many people on a modern coach still wearing winter coats, beanies & gloves (it was quite a contrast to the infamous roach-coach).

We wound our way up the coast road with an informative commentary that never seemed to stop – I’m unsure just how many times I heard the phrase “there’s another little piece of useless information for you”, it’s a pity I’ve forgotten most of it, as it was truly useless.  Not to worry – the scenery was pretty and there still a dusting of snow around.  Our first proper stop was at the rope bridge of Carrick-a-Rede, which was a bit of a walk from the parking lot.  Graciela by now had developed a sore throat & was not keen on an exposed walk, so I headed off by myself into the bracing wind along the top of the cliffs.  There’s been a bridge over to the little island for over three hundred years, mostly for fisherman to get across to collect large salmon catches – but that has dwindled now & it is mostly tourists trip-trapping over the plummet to the sea below.

All I could think of was the Bridge of Death and the Gorge of Eternal Peril (Oh, whacko) and making sure I got the five questions, three questions, correct.  Convincing myself that my favourite colour is indeed still green and reassured by the bridge-keeper from the National Trust not looking a bit like the Old Man from Scene 24, I made it across safely.  There wasn’t too much to see on the island itself, but the view along the cliffs was nice & I could easily look over to the Mull of Kintyre (where I was with Mum & Dad but four and a half years ago).  The weather closed in again & started liquid-sunshining (raining) on me as I walked briskly back – it was a really pleasant hour out of the coach along beautiful coast.

Just down the road was the UNESCO World Heritage site of Giant’s Causeway, which I was keen to see as on the trip with Mum & Dad mentioned above we went to Staffa (not far away, but over off the coast of Scotland) and saw similar basalt columns.  It managed to stop raining for the walk down to the sea & we had a good hour or so mucking around on the large, wet, slippery regular paving stones – the tessellation results from the cooling of the basalt after a volcanic eruption.

Some of the steps suddenly dropped off a few metres – probably good not to get blown over there

Other people to take photos of me – hoorah!

The wind may have got up a bit more

It was a quiet & quicker drive back to Belfast – it’s always surprisingly tiring work sitting on & getting in & out of a coach all day.  We stocked up on breakfast supplies (potato bread is a thing of Irish genius – I bought extra to bring some back home) before warming up & heading out for a night on the town.  Belfast was extremely busy for a mid-winter Saturday, it took us quite some time to find a table to eat at in the Cathedral Quarter.  After which I was reminded how tedious I usually find nightclubs – on the upside, the pint of Guinness was better than the one from the night before.  Oh yeah, by now Graciela had all but completely lost her voice so while that was amusing on a superficial level it did somewhat kill the joviality of the night.

Sunday morning was a bit lazier, but I managed to get everyone out the door before noon – so I counted that as a win for not wasting too much of the day!  We pottered around City Hall (no Union flag flying, odd that) as nothing much opens in Northern Ireland before one o’clock on a Sunday.  The others were intent on shopping, I was more interested in eating – so I went & found a nice lunch by myself before we all headed out to the recent (last year) Titanic Belfast museum.

It’s a striking building

And there’s a feature wall of steel slab, which of course made me happy

The museum is very well done & worth the entry fee.  There’s a good split between how Titanic was built (shipbuilding is a large part of Belfast’s very proud industrial heritage), what the ship itself was like and, of course (the bit that was in the back of one’s mind throughout the rest of the exhibit), the disastrous sinking and loss of life.  There was also plenty about Southampton, another proud maritime city, so I really must go and check out some of the local museums when I’ve got spare time at home.

Not sure how I’ve managed to write so much about a relatively quiet weekend (I definitely did a lot less walking & saw less than if I’d been by myself), but it was a good one & I’m glad it all worked out in the end.