There’s not much of a blog from me today. It’s not been a vintage day and the weather here in the Calder Valley’s been miserable. We’ve been buried in dank and dismal fog all day with visibility down to just a few hundred metres. I did my best to keep occupied with a spot of gardening and stretched my legs by going shopping for tonight’s home-cooked meal (Parsi prawns, which I haven’t cooked for ages) but otherwise much of my day has been spent building up an archive of fresh slide scans which will give me something to do during down time at Christmas. My plan to have all all the old slides scanned by the end of the year proved optimistic. I’ve still several thousand left to do, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Barring some unknown cataclysm such as the end of the Earth I will have the project finished in 2022 – just don’t ask me *when* in 2022! I’ve finished all the shots from my Bali trip in 1994 and 1995 and moved on to a series of UK travel shots from the summer of 1995. Here’s one of them supplying the picture of the day…
Easter 1995 saw Lynn and I join a couple of our North London neighbours who were walking the whole of the Ridgeway. We joined them for the last leg to the amazing village of Avebury in Wiltshire. This tiny village is built in the middle of a prehistoric stone circle which is surrounded by a massive ditch, but it’s not the only prehistoric site in the area, just a few miles down the road is Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow. This is where today’s picture was taken, on the 1st April 1995…
Silbury Hill framed by some of the stones that form the outside of West Kennet Long Barrow.
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The pair of us are having a local but active day here at Bigland Towers. Dawn’s been busy baking, experimenting with some cake and cookie recipies whilst I’ve been occupied in the office. I had a phone call on Friday afternoon that’s completely changed my plans for next week as it involves some commissions and COP26 so trips to Scotland beckon. Meanwhile, I’ve some articles to pen before I do, which means the week ahead’s going to be hectic.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been trying to keep up the momentum on scanning old slides, which leads to today’s little picture story.
The latest batch of slides were taken in 1994 when I was working as a Housing Officer in Bow, East London. Having left my previous housing job in nearby Poplar (where I lived) to spend a year travelling solo in SE Asia I applied for a job with Bow neighbourhood, was accepted and offered a position as Housing Officer on the Lefevre Estate. The name sounded far better than the reality. The Estate consisted of a series of brutalist 1970s deck access maisonettes linked together by walkways. Our office, located on the estate, wasn’t much better. Even so, I really enjoyed working there. Ehen I accepted the job I’d been told that the estate was due to be transferred to a new Government quango called a Housing Action Trust (HAT), one of only 5 in the country. This would manage the complete redevelopment of the estate and 2 others adjacent. I had the option of staying with the council and being transferred to another job, or being TUPE’d across to the HAT when it was established. Being adventurous and liking what the embryonic HAT Management team told me about what to expect and the opportunities to broaden my skills that would be on offer, I decided to sign up.
This meant that I stayed on the HAT estates for the rest of my housing career. A decision I never regretted although I’d no idea at that time what my future career looked like. I could write a book about those times, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. Instead, I’m going to talk about something else – one of the railways of that part of the East End and the changing face of London.
Our office on Lefevre Walk backed onto what had been a scrapyard, but before that it had been a railway. The North London Railway. It had been a Southerly branch from what’s still the North London Line (now the Overground) running through Old Ford, Poplar and Bow down to the London docks. I moved to East London in 1986 so never knew this line when it was open as it had closed a couple of years before. In those last days it had been a freight only line although I could still see the remains of some of the old stations like Bow Rd which had all closed in 1944 due to enemy action.
Sadly, I never researched the route by getting any books on the NLR. Nowadays it’s so easy just to look stuff up on the internet, but not in 1994. So, whilst I knew that the old scrapyard outside my office window (known as Yallop’s Yard) had been an old railway goods yard I never knew at the time there’d been an old railway station on part of the site. In some ways that’s not too surprising. The area looked completely different as in the 1970s an urban motorway (the A102M) had cut a swathe through the old factories and homes in the Lea Valley. Here’s some of the pictures I took in 1994, then I’ll link to something that shows you how it used to look even earlier. To say you wouldn’t recognise it now is an understatement. I don’t recognise the 1950s photos. Today, if you visited the area, you wouldn’t recognise it from my 1994 pictures either!
The Lefevre walk estate in April 1994 with my old office in the centre. The old railway yard is behind with the A102M beyond. After that is the canal with the London Borough of Newham beyond. When the estate was built no-one even tried to give the blocks pretty names, they just had letters. So some people lived in H Block. Nice! Sadly, time has dimmed the memory, so I can’t remember which blocks you can see here. Everything you see is gone now – apart from the urban motorway! The area to the right beyond looks very different now – that’s because it became the 2012 Olympic park. Who would have thought back then…Looking South from the corner of the block you can see in the previous picture. My old office is in the bottom right and the route of the North London Railway and Old Ford goods yard can be seen to the left. The Tower blocks beyond are in Poplar and were built on old NLR railway land. The edifice in the middle is the old Bryant and May match works which was then being converted into apartments. Just behind it is the Great Eastern Main Line with Stratford to your left. The match factory has an important part in social history due to the match girls strike. The goods yard and the route of the NLR are now buried under new homes. The road you see going off into the horizon to the right of the match works is Fairfield Rd. It used to take me 15 minutes to walk to work along it. Happy days!
Here’s a zoom shot showing the course of the North London Railway heading South. The first bridge is where the Great Eastern main line crosses. The second is the link from the GEML at Bow junction to the former London Tilbury and Southend line to Fenchurch St at Gas Factory Junction. The NLR route had been converted into a linear park several years previously (at considerable expense) but was now being taken for housing as London’s population – which had been shrinking since World War 2 was suddenly expanding again. See the red roofed building below the tower blocks? If you look to the right you can just make out the platforms of Bow Rd DLR station.
Here’s a view of the Old Ford Goods yard and station site taken in October 1994 when the contaminated soil had been removed – hence the lakes! The former railway station was situated on the extreme right of the picture with the lines running along the base of the concrete wall. Behind is the wall of maisonettes that made up part of the Lefevre Walk estate. This next shot was taken in September 1994 from the top floor of one of the blocks you see above. A footbridge has replaced the original old Ford Road. The hoarding underneath it is the site of Old Ford Station. The remains of the North London Line trackbed can be seen as the green strip along the edge of the A102M.
Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, it’s easy to research images of what they area used to look like. The excellent ‘Disused stations’ website has the history of the railway and also some old pictures of the station and area. Even I was surprised by how the place used to look! Here’s a link to a look at a long-vanished part of London’s East End.
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The weather forecast for Shropshire was lousy today. It claimed we’d be awash with rain, so we’d planned accordingly and arranged a couple of indoor visits. After a leisurely start to the day that involved lots of coffee and a healthy breakfast of porridge, blueberry compote and toasted coconut flakes we drove off to our first assignment – a visit to the Royal Airforce Museum at Cosford. For anyone interested in aircraft it’s an amazing place packed full of aircraft right through from World War 1 Sopwith Pups right to prototype Eurofighters – with lots more in between. The aircraft and other exhibits are spread over several halls, most of which are old aircraft hangers but the building dedicated to telling the story of the ‘cold war’ is a custom-built structure and a great exhibition space. Due to Covid rules we were encouraged to pre-book and register for add-ons like the 4D ‘Red Arrows’ experience, where you feel like you’re in the cockpit of one of the planes flying in their famous displays. The museum was quiet when we visited so we had the 4D experience (which costs £5 apiece) to ourselves. The pair of us found the museum so interesting we ended up spending several hours there, from 11:00 until after 14:30. Admittedly, we did take a coffee break in the cafe in-between halls!
An English Electric ‘Lightning’ interceptor aircraft on display in the ‘Cold War’ building. The Mach 2 Lightning was in service with the RAF from 1960 until 1988. It was designed to protect the RAF’s nuclear deterrent ‘V-Bomber’ airfields from Russian bomber aircraft. It’s displayed like this in homage to its incredible rate of climb capability which led to the nickname pilots gave it – the ‘Frightening’. This is the British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 strike and reconnaissance aircraft, one of only two ever built before the programme was cancelled back in 1965. The decision was controversial with some people maintaining this was the best aircraft we never built. Here’s the Sikorsky S-65/HH-53C ‘Super Jolly Green Giant’ helicopter which was converted for special operations – hence the rotary cannon sticking out of the side behind the cockpit!
On leaving we drove back to our next appointment which was in Shrewsbury where we’d booked to see the new James Bond film “No time to Die”. At 2 hours 40 it’s hardly a short film but to be honest, the time flew by! It’s a blockbuster of a film with a real twist that I won’t reveal but fans of the franchise won’t be disappointed by the action scenes, chases, locations or gadgets. Daniel Craig’s as excellent as ever. Personally, I’d have to say he’s been my favourite Bond since Sean Connery started the ball rolling.
Now we’re relaxing at ‘home’ with a drink after scoffing a home-made veggie noodle stir-fry. Tomorrow the weathers meant to change once more so we’ll be back outdoors. The plan is to spend much of the day walking on the Long Mynd at Church Stretton, which is a wonderful bit of countryside. Watch this space…
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There’s not been much relaxing today. We were up early as we had a full day planned in order to beat the weather as the forecast wasn’t great. We really wanted to get some walking in so as soon as we were ready we drove over to Church Stretton, a place I’ve not visited since 2003 and that Dawn’s never visited. Our mission was to climb Caer Caradoc, a 459m tall hill (and old hill fort) to the East of the town. Despite the weather it was a glorious walk, the views from the top are superb. Plus, you get to see what weather front you’re likely to be facing, which in our case was heavy rain! So after enjoying the views and getting a selection of pictures we high-tailed it out of there! Here’s why…
Back at base we sheltered in the car before driving South to Ludlow in torrential rain. Mercifully, the downpour eased after we arrived leaving us free to explore the town which is an architectural gem. It also has more drunken buildings than I think I’ve seen in any English city.
*I’ll flesh this blog out tomorrow. I’ve far more pictures and information to add…*
Our plans for today changed just as quickly as the weather. Last night we’d intended that today would’ve been spent walking on the Long Mynd outside Church Stretton, just 30 minutes away from where we’re staying. The only problem was the forecast had changed overnight, so plan B was put into action. Another place we wanted to visit was the recreation of a Victorian industrial town at Blists Hill near Ironbridge. Ducking and diving in-between museum buildings seemed like a far better option than getting soaked in showers on the moors, so we chose the former, which turned out to be a wise choice.
We both thoroughly enjoyed our visit. The collection of buildings on an old industrial site which has a rich history was fascinating, as was the fact the staff (in period dress) knew so much about the era they were recreating, which made the visit far more interesting and educational. It’s not just a collection of re-erected old buildings, it’s far more. The original industrial remains themselves would be worth the visit, from the old canal to the remains of the ironworks and blast-furnaces. The museum’s on a grand scale.
For now, here’s one picture. This is a replica of the world’s first steam locomotive to run on rails, designed by Cornishman Richard Trevithick which was built in 1802. It tootles up and down along a short demonstration track alongside the canal with the original brick and tile works as a backdrop.
4th October
Here’s some other pictures, with more to come…
Inside the candlemakers, a vital industry in Victorian times as candles were most ordinary people’s only source of light. This chap showed us the process of making what would have been tallow candles. Each wick would be dipped up to 25 times in order to build the candle to the required size.
People dressed in clothing of the time, and showing the correct skin pallor! Actors like this could be found wandering around the site as well as staffing the shops.
Yesterday it was my pleasure to attend yet another celebration at Mytholmroyd, where the station friends and guests were unveiling a plaque celebrating the restoration of the 1871 station building winning a Railway Heritage Trust conservation award in December 2019. Sadly, the Covid pandemic postponed any chance to celebrate the award or mount the plaque until this year. Ironically, the postponement meant that the plaque was unveiled this year, which is the 150th anniversary of the building’s construction. The present building replaced an original timber structure from when the line opened in 1847. Records show that the contract to construct the building was let by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in May 1870 to a “Mr Wilkinson, contractor of Mytholmroyd”. In June 1870 construction was suspended due to excavations causing part of the embankment under the Down line to subside. Work resumed at the end of September 1870 and the new building opened in December 1871*. You can find a full selection of pictures of the interior of the refurbished building in this blog. Here’s how the building looks from street level. Passengers on passing trains don’t appreciate the sheer size of the building as they only see the top floor.
Here’s a selection of pictures from yesterday’s unveiling.
The plaque revealed!The participants from L-R. Craig Whittaker, MP for the Calder Valley. Geoff Mitchell (Friends of Mytholmroyd). Andy Savage, Railway Heritage Trust and RHA Judge. Sue Mitchell (Friends of Mytholmroyd). Chris Harris, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire. Bob Freeth, Mayor of Hebden Royd Council. Theo Steel, Railway Heritage Trust. The plaque.
Work will soon begin to outfit the interior of the building ready to accept its first tenants. No doubt when that happens I’ll be bringing you more updates!
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Thank you!
*Thanks to Michael Allen of Mytholmroyd for providing me with the historical information on the station construction
Well, the new week certainly dawned – and it wasn’t a bad one too! In fact the weather here in the Calder valley’s been far sunnier than expected, although someone seems to have forgotten it’s still August and dialed-down the temperature to an October setting! I can’t really complain as most of my day’s been spent staring at a computer screen in order to finish editing all last weeks pictures from my Cumbrian trip and get them on my Zenfolio website. You can find the full selection and which galleries they’ve been added to by clicking on the ‘recent’ button, here’s a shortcut that will take you straight to it!
I’ve another day planned where I’ll be chained to my desk again tomorrow, but as the weather’s meant to be wet I’m hardly going to complain. There’s no shortage of pictures to scan, paperwork to shuffle, blogs to write or trips to plan. Hopefully I’ll be out and about again by Thursday.
In the meantime, here’s the picture of the day, which I took last week. It’s of an unassuming house on the outskirts of Wylam on the Tyne valley. The Wylam waggonway (an early railway) ran past the front of the house, right where I was standing to take the picture.
What’s special is not the house but the person who was born there. On the 9th June 1781 a boy was born to Robert and Mabel Stephenson, they christened him George. George Stephenson became famous as the ‘father of the railways’ – not bad for a child born to illiterate parents who was unable to read and write himself until he was 18! Yet he became world famous as a civil and mechanical engineer. His son Robert (born on the 16th October 1803) followed in his footsteps and the father and son team helped railways conquer the world and the industrial revolution to change the face of Britain.
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Today’s been a lot less fraught. No ailing moggie to worry about for a start. Instead the little bugger seems to have made a speedy recovery and spent most of the day either curled up asleep on our bed or mewing for food, attention – or both. Jet’s such a lovely old boy that we can hardly be upset with him. Instead we just cherish the time we have with together.
The weather here in the Calder Valley’s certainly taken a turn. Although the forecast was for rain for much of the day we’ve had very little, merely the odd shower and a few claps of thunder out of some spectacularly threatening skies. Most of the really dark stuff has passed us by – which has allowed me to get in my daily perambulations without getting soaked. I’ve even managed a spot of gardening – cutting back the brambles on the terrace at the back of the house where they’ve made another bid for world domination. I’m sat up on the terrace now, beer in hand, gazing out across the Calder Valley, watching the next phalanx of stormclouds march towards us. It’s looking like this weather’s with us for the rest of the week now which is a shame in one way, but the gardens and woods would certainly benefit from the rain. Either way, I’ve got plenty to occupy myself with, so a few days climate-induced “house arrest” isn’t a problem.
The rest of the day’s not been unproductive. As well as sorting out paperwork I’ve enjoyed a pleasent few hours in the office, lining up some projects for the future now the country’s opening up again, as well as getting more old slides scanned. Right now I’m on an album of really random stuff that never got fully catalogued or filed, so there’s a melange of pictures taken between 1989 – 2003. Travel shots from the USA and Asia or images from my days working in social housing – even pictures of old friends – and of course old shots of Lynn. There’s such a mix of memories in these albums. I’m looking forward to having them all done so that I have digitised access to them in order to do something with them – even if it is just to jog some friends memories on Facebook, saying “remember this”?
This brings me on to the picture of the day which is one of today’s new scans. I took this shot of the old Three Mills complex at Bromley-by-Bow in East London on the 15th February 1990. In those days I lived just down the road on Bromley High St so this place was in walking distance and one day the winter sunshine was perfect for pictures. Built on the River Lea, Three Mills is the world’s largest tidal mill.
The grade 1 listed buildings have a long and fascinating history dating back to the 12th Century. In their time the mills have seen a multitude of uses, from milling flour to grinding grain for alcohol then distilling and bottling it or making gunpowder and used as warehouses right up to their present use for educational projects and as conference spaces. It’s a fascinating survivor of a world long-gone in this part of East London.
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I’ve had another productive day at home catching up on various jobs, emails, seminars and picture editing – and still found enough time to get a couple of walks under my belt to clock up my minimum number (12.5k) daily step total, so I really can’t complain. The weather’s played ball too being mostly bright and sunny even if it’s not exactly been cracking the flags.
Whilst I was ‘type swiping’ this morning at lunchtime I joined the latest ‘munch and learn’ seminar from the Rail Innovation Group. I enjoy these sessions and log-on when I can. Today’s was a presentation by Johan Berhin, Designer & Founder of Green Furniture Concept, a company based in Sweden who’ve recently produced new green seating for some of Network Rail’s major stations in London that have replaced some of the sturdy (but uncomfortable and not very attractive) metal seats. I’ll be producing a blog about this next week as it was a great session with a lots of interesting facts and facets about how seating doesn’t just improve passenger satisfaction it also generates extra business for retail outlets on stations. Expect these seats to appear at Leeds soon…
Apart from this I’ve also been busy getting my next RAIL article on HS2 together, although It’s taking slightly longer than I’d thought as there’s an interesting environmental aspect to the Calvert site I need to talk to someone ‘in the know’ about. Even so, it’s already been fun to write.
Plus, as a filler for the day I did manage to get a few more old slides from the archive scanned, which has provided the latest picture of the day. My old slide folder currently contains pictures from 1993 – 2003, but there was one small group that stood alone as they’re from the UK rather than India, Bali, Holland or Denmark – although there is an Asian connection to today’s picture of the day as it’s of the Maharajah’s well at Stoke Row in Oxfordshire, which I took on the 21st July 2003.
Lynn and I had taken a weekend break from London by taking the bikes on the train from Paddington to Cholsey in order to stay with a friend in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. The next day we worked off our hangovers with a long cycle ride through the rolling countryside and happened upon this rather unusual feature. Inscribed around the lip of the onion done is the inscription ” Given by his Highness The Maharajah of Benares 1864″. What on earth is a well donated by an Indian Maharajah doing in Oxfordshire you may well ask? After all, this is the first known established Charity in Great Britain of an Indian nobleman? The answer lies in the fact that a story of a little boy was being beaten by his mother for drinking the last of the water in their house during a drought was was narrated by Edward Anderdon Reade, acting governor general of the United Provinces, to the Maharajah of Benares (now Varanasi) at the latter’s palace over dinner. Moved by the story the Maharajah agreed to fund the sinking of a well in the village. It was the first of several in the region. All were funded by royals and other benefactors from India, inspired by the Maharajah of Benares’s example. The well itself is 368 feet deep and cost £353. In contrast, the caretaker’s cottage (seen in the background) cost £74 14s 6d.
Amazing what crosses your path by chance when you’re out cycling, isn’t it?
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I can’t believe we’re on the penultimate day of June already! Half way through 2021 in what (in many ways) feels like the blink of an eye. Admittedly, because of Covid part of me has been wishing it away, purely so we can see the back of the pandemic and the world returning to a normal life – although I suspect that’s not going to happen until 2022, despite the UKs success in rolling out the vaccines. Populist politics has shown it’s the Emperor’s new clothes in several countries, exacerbating the problems in countries like India and Brazil to name but two. It’s going to take time to unpick the mess, but at least the USA dumped Trump and got back on the road to recovery. Now, if only we could do with a certain blond buffoon here…
There’s been no travelling for me this week as I’ve had too much to do at home, catching up after so many days away. That’s not been a bad thing. It’s allowed me to get all my recent pictures edited and placed on my Zenfolio website, get other images out to clients and wade through a load of paperwork. Plus, after some weeks where thing have been allowd to slide (if you’ll pardon the pun) I’ve also managed to get some more of my old travel transparencies edite and on the website. So, finally, 29-30 years after I took them, all the scannable pictures I have from my 1991-1992 world trip have been added to this gallery. Now I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere after so many years and a project that’s taken me three decades is finally drawing to an end. Oh, I’ve still got a few thousand to scan but that’s manageable. When I added the latest batch to my website earlier day I realised I’d passed the 5000 mark in less than six months – and that’s with new pictures also. The most I’ve ever managed to add in a year since 2011 when I started stocking my new site has been 6200. If anything’s come out of Covid for me, it’s been this.
Apart from being a personal trip down memory lane I’m hoping I can provide an interesting archive for those who want to see how much the world’s changed in the past few decades. Plus, the pictures are going to allow me to tell quite a few stories when I get around to digitising and cross-referencing some of my old diaries as I’ve quite a few travel stories to tell from the days when backpackers went overland rather than jetting in and jetting out of disparate destinations.
Nostalgia’s not been the only thing that’s kept me occupied this week. I’ve been sending out a backlog of pictures to clients and I’ve a new article to write for RAIL magazine on the High Speed 2 railway following my site visit last week. Once this week’s over I’ll be back travelling as I’ve got several commissions and other travels lined-up. July’s going to be a busy month.
In the meantime, I’ll still be adding pictures old and new as well as blogging – and poking fun at what’s left of the anti HS2 campaign which is on its last legs. But, tonight I’ll end with a picture of the day from my 1991-92 travels. I took this picture of Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia in September 1992 as I returned from a boat-trip to nearby Semau Island.
At that time Timor was an unhappy Island. The Indonesians had invaded East Timor many years before and a civil war still raged. The East is now its own master again, but that’s not the only thing thing the Island is known for – Kupang especially has another place in history, as anyone who’s heard of the story of ‘The mutiny on the Bounty might know, because it’s here that Captain William Bligh and 14 of the crew who refused to take part in the mutiny made landfall after being set adrift in one of the ships boats. It was an extrordinary feat of navigation after a journey of 47 days and 3,618 nautical miles to land here, navigating using only a pocket-watch, a quadrant and a compass, but no charts.
Thankfully, my Island hoping was always a little more relaxed, but I have to say it was quite a buzz to visit a town so far away but with such a history.
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 