Bubonic Plague from Black Death victims in the East End of London. And tuberculosis then and now

In 1985, I excavated the first plague pit to be recognised on Spital Square excavations. It started with me recognising two skeletons on top of each other, one buried face up, the other face down. And then I recognised the other skeletons in the group, all intact and with the outer skeletons slightly bent to the sides of a square pit. Now skeletons from Spitalfields and "East Smithfield" (the Mint) may have yielded DNA confirming that Bubonic Plague was the cause of Black Death.
Spitalfields - the historic name for the area of which Spital Square is just a part - is a corruption of Hospital Fields and is named after the hospital of St Mary without (outside) Bishopsgate, which lay to the east of the main road north leading out of the City of London. It was later built over and became an immigrant suburb. It was characteristically "East End" of London, with markets and low wage jobs. The Corporation of the City of London built a new wholesale market there (markets had been held there since the 17th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spitalfields_Market ). This displaced residents for whom the Corporation built the flats I live in  

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Housing/Council_housing/Housing_estates/dron.htm  . The area is still a hotspot for a modern plague, tuberculosis, with 60.5 cases per 100,000 in 2009 compared with 15 per 100,000 in England as a whole Tower Hamlets Factsheet . It always was a hotspot for the disease and Heliotherapy was pioneered at the Royal London Hospital (who treated king George V with it in 1928). My Grandparents, Bernard and Elizabeth Sefton, osteopaths from the 1930s, used ultra-violet lamps in their practice, they did not cure, but did control their daughter, my auntie Olive's TB gland in her neck. A neighbour and colleague was greatly weakened by tuberculosis, which contributed to his death in the 1980s. People and Landscape....

(Y. pestis is a recently evolved descendent of the soil-dwelling bacillus Yersinia pseudotuberculosis)

30 years of the London Wildlife Trust

This is a bit of a plug - but the London Wildlife Trust does vital work in extending corridors of life through the concrete jungle. 

London Wildlife Trust 30 years from adamrowley on Vimeo.

Just with birds of prey, Red Kites are seen regularly in London now http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4600334.stm (they were common in Shakespeare's day), Peregrines breed on the Barbican http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5016968.stm and I saw a Sparrowhawk  on the border of Hackney and Islington (he got mobbed by Hackney crows and flew off back to leafy Islington, perhaps he was this blokes http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/animal/p19214-sparrowhawk-in-london.html )

Coral Strand, Carraroe, Connemara, Ireland

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/53558688 

Coral Strand or Trá an Dóilín  is made from the excreted mineral (1/3 calcium carbonate) of  corallines  red algae, rather than true coral. It has been used in the past to sweeten the acidic local soils, and is a soil conditioner, BUT it is a non-renewable resource as the stuff is excreted at a far slower rate than it could be used.  

Click on http://www.panoramio.com/photo/53558692  to see location


An Cheathrú Rua the Irish for carraroe, means the Red or Ruddy Quarter and despite being a townland (baile) it derives the first part from the Irish name for a quarter-division of a wider baile / community. The ruddy part refers often to poor land, through the browning or bronzing of dead vegetation, possibly. 


Connemara,  Conmaic ne mara is commonly translated as the tribe of Cormac by the sea. It has never had any official standing but refers to the wilder district of Connacht and County Galway which stretches west into the Atlantic.  Despite - or because - of official neglect it retained a strong local identity, large Irish-speaking communities, its own breed of horse and a tradition of personal and communal independence. 

The Liberator and one of the 60 great (public) places (on the planet)

"The Liberator" in Ennis, a photo by david sankey on Flickr.

O'Connell Street

County Clare

Ennis, Ireland

Contributed by Project for Public Spaces ---translated into English by sankey --- for the original, go to http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/one?public_place_id=173

Along with the two other main streets that branch off of Ennis' central O'Connell Square, O'Connell street bustles with activity at all hours.

• For more images of O'Connell Street or other places, try searching our Image Collection

Why It Works Cars, lorries, bicycles and pedestrians are all accommodated naturally. The well-cared-for street has everything from pubs and music halls to department stores and chemists, making it relevant day and night, for all ages and interests. Although the scale of the street is quite narrow, including pavements, cars and walkers are treated well. Beautiful hanging plants adorn the lamp posts, and cobblestoned crossings and intersections indicate where to cross the road.

What Makes O'Connell Street a Great Place?

• The scale of the town centre is easily walkable
• Although the scale of the street is quite narrow, including pavements, cars and walkers are treated well, beautiful hanging plants adorn the lampposts and cobblestoned crossings and intersections indicate where people cross the street.
• The well-cared-for street has everything from pubs and music halls to department stores and chemists, making it relevant day and night, for all ages and interests. O'Connell Square, at the top of the street, is a natural gathering place.

History & Background

Ennis is a county seat with a growing population, estimated at approximately 20,000. One of the larger cities in Ireland [surely not - definitely NOT a city merely a county town, DS], it is a cultural center as well, hosting serveral of Ireland's best-known traditional music festivals. Ennis blossomed as a market town in the late 1700s.

O'Connell Street and O'Connell Square honour Daniel O'Connor, an MP for Clare in the mid-1800s and pivotal Catholic politician and leader. A statue of O'Connell stands in the square, on the site of the old courthouse. [O'Connell Street was formerly "Gaol Street" Jail Street. DS] The town was founded in 1208 by the O'Briens, who built a castle on the edge of the modern town, which lies on the River Fergus. The O'Briens ruled until they vacated Ennis for Bunratty Castle.

Related Links:

• Web cam of O'Connell Square - .
• History of Ennis - .
• 60 of the World's Great Places - O'Connell Street was named one of the 60 greatest places in the world 
• See also my previous blog http://londonlandscapeobservatory.blogspot.com/2011/09/ennis-2011.html

  
  

Irish Landscape books - worth a squint - nice presents or borrow from your library

I've just received my copy and am reading Valerie Hall's fascinating recently published book on the Irish Landscape
The fascinating story of Ireland's changing landscape begins over 11,000 years ago as the last Ice Age ended. Through a combination of authoritative text and photographs, this easily accessible book describes how the landscape of Ireland has been shaped. It tells the story of how natural forces as well as people influenced the landscape, its plants and animals, and traces the history of the wild places as well as the development of the farmed landscape. The photographs, many of which are of modern subjects, emphasise how the past Irish landscape continues to resonate today. - its says 'ere, DS 

• Publisher: The Collins Press
• Publication date: 10/04/2011
• ISBN-13: 9781848891159

It has a hard act to follow in Mitchell and Ryan's Reading the Irish landscape - which I've long treasured

The authors seek to produce a total insight which synthesises geology, geography and archaeology, with botany and zoology also covered to an extent. Remarkably, they shed stiumulating light on many aspects of the subject by comparisons with parallels elsewhere in the world; thus an early painting of aboriginal fishing in New South Wales, and an early 20th century photo of drying fish in Newfoundland, are set alongside a photograph of Aran Islanders launching a curragh. With this cross-disciplinary approach, technical language is both necessary and problematic; the solution constantly striven for is to keep jargon to a minimum and to define specialist terms as they arise in the text. To a large extent this works; the book can be read by the intelligent lay reader without constant referal to glossaries. 

The later section takes the reader through the effect of human activity on the landscape from prehistory to the present day, in a survey well-illustrated with aerial photos and contemporary prints. ...said one reader

ISBN 1860590551 9781860590559 0946172544 9780946172542

or Fred Aalen et al's Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape

harnessed the expertise of dozens of specialists to produce an exciting and pioneering study which has two basic aims: to increase understanding and appreciation of the landscape as an important element of national heritage and to provide a much needed basis for landscape conservation and planning. The complex assemblages of features, physical and human, which gives landscapes their distinctive regional character are examined in relation to man-made elements, such as field and settlement patterns, enclosure methods, rural buildings, demesnes, villages and small towns, archaeological/historical monuments, woodland, bogs, communications, and industrial archaeology.

ISBN:	9781859184592 1859184596

San Francisco earthquakes fires and kites

This image is taken from a kite - of San Francisco after the fires and devastation that followed the 1906 earthquake. It is a perspective that was unavailable to a human at the time the shutter was pressed. A remote-sensing viewpoint on a tragedy which has ingrained through stories and repetition into the psyche of the place. 

Liscannor Stone between Bryant and May Match factory and the Olympic Park, London

It is always a pleasure to find out about people's past/s. A machine driver I met working east of the Bow Back River...

...and between the former Bryant and May match factory (where the match girls struck with Annie Besant and Eleanor Marx Click here for more)...

....and the Olympic Park in East London...

formerly worked at Liscannor Stone quarries, including old quarries on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher (Click here for more)

If perception is defined by perspective, and we bring a lifetime of experience to interpret our senses... it makes you think

Shoreditch Park

Shoreditch Park, a set on Flickr.

Just a sunny day chilling in Shoreditch Park. Parks in London are the most used of any that I know - and everyone from circus skills to footballers to mum and kids were all around AND the most massive "Oktoberfest" beer tent you've ever seen. Time + place x people = character

Cable Street 75

Click on Cable Street 75, for more photos

Saturday was the commemorative march and rally for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street

It occurred in much the same area as that weher the racist English Defence League were blocked -- in fact, the police had (at one time) proposed putting the EDL in the pedestrianised bit of what had been "Gardiners Corner" Click here for earlier post about EDL being kept out of Tower Hamlets

View Cable Street 75 in a larger map