Warwick Castle, East Front from the Courtyard, Canaletto, 1752

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery's Canaletto landscape of Warwick Castle got me musing

Warwick Castle, East Front from the Courtyard, Canaletto, 1752, a photo by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on Flickr.

the castle is still remarkably intact 

original photo  from Ramiro Nararas

...and very much as depicted in the Canaletto. Historic landmarks such as this help define the character and identity of a place. It lies on the banks of the Avon, and is now very much a tourist attraction, but once was a seat of immense power and prestige.

Why Whitechapel?

TV Series "Whitechapel"

Whitechapel has become synonymous with murder stories - Jack the Ripper, the Kray Twins, bla, blah. So much so that an ITV drama series is based on the association Click here for ITV drama "Whitechapel"

As far as I can see this is principally because of the "Jack the Rippeer"  murders in the late 19th century (you can look up no-end of ghoulish stuff on them if you want to). These were called the "Whitechapel murders" in contemporary accounts. The Museum in the Docklands had an excellent exhibition on them click here for more . But all sorts of ill-doings have got lumped together so that the area has become thoroughly stigmatised by the likes of the Kray Twins (more Bethnal Green)  or elements in Peter Ackroyds Historical novel Hawksmoor. The latest television series featutres the nearby Ratcliffe Highway Murders, the alleged murderer of which was buried in the crossroads of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street near the Crown and Dolphin.   But the reasons are more prosaic and have much to do with why the Ripper murders were such a press sensation in the 1880s. It is because Whitechapel frightens people.

The reasons are foremost its  location, close to the heart of economic power in the City of London, its poverty and the number of immigrants as a poor area near to docks.  The consequence is an implied threat to the given social order. That was explicit in the (over-?)response to the anarchist armed bank robbers in the Siege of Sydney Street  (and why Churchill prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the fire). It is because it is an implied "alien" threat to the existing order. Despite his otherwise left-wing leanings, the strangeness of its inhabitants led Lack London to describe them as  "doomed to a moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savage in cleanliness and decency." in The People of the Abyss

It is the same impulse which lead to this area welcoming people who were otherwise out of sorts with society. Thomas Paine - who wrote the The Rights of Man taught at Mr Noble's school on Leman Street, and the exile Trotsky lived on Sydney Street, for a while and Joseph Conrad - the Polish author - lived in a seaman's hostel on Wellclose Square  

It is also the strangeness that frightened neo-nazi thugs, who brutally murdered local textile/garment worker Altab Ali, and later set a bomb in nearby Brick Lane

They rarely show the generosity and creativity which characterised the recent public archaeology event in Altab Ali Park, the site of the White Chapel (St Mary) 

So, next time you enjoy scaring yourself with stories about exotic Whitechapel, give a thought to us, its ordinary inhabitants

The Changing face of housing in the East End of London

This And That, a photo by Dave Gorman on Flickr.
Thanks to Dave Gorman for the photo above, which ably demonstrates that modern investment is for generic student  housing in a block called NIDO click here for more info  compared with the older local authority housing blocks, originally built as slum clearance. However, will student numbers decline as a response to spiralling fees?


Compare the surface treatment of the NIDO to that of the nearby Royal London Hospital at Whitrechapel. Is there a problem when buildings with very different functions look alike? or is it the zeitgeist? or a new local Historic Landscape Character?

New Royal London Hospital building, Whitechapel, a photo by louisberk on Flickr.
Thanks to Louis Berk for this image

A ramble round Tardebigge locks and Worcester

The Birmingham and Worcester Canal links the two great cities into a the water transport network via a great flight of locks at Tardebigge near Bromsgrove.  Two days over Christmas I rambled around Tardebigge and Worcester, the slideshow below shows what I saw. If you point your cursor at it then labels appear and if you click them you go to the desired photograph with a map and notes.

The River Severn used to be tidal up to Worcester, making this place both a great place to cross the river and also a good place for river craft to get to. The historical forces of the landscape on people, as well as the forces people have had on the landscape, are profound and operate on a scale it is difficult to imagine

Click here for a list of thumbnails to select photos

View Tardebigge and Worcester in a larger map

Stourbridge drift (derive) Yule 2011

Click on a thumbnail to get a bigger picture and text

Click  here  for  a  map  with  links

Stourbridge drift (derive) Yule 2011, a set on Flickr.

A mooch round Stourbridge, where I lived in the 1970s, underlined its continued decline over the last thirty years. The thriving bits appeared to be the Job Centre+ and the Canal basin, opened by Direct Action. And yet this was a genteel well-healed town fuelled by 17th-century industrialism with the Earl of Dudley sponsoring research into smelting iron from coal and gentilhomme verriers making glass also "early adopters" of using coal in the 17th century. From that era comes a Friends Meeting House from the year that persecution of Quakers ceased. By the 18th-century the local pit and coal owners were flashing the cash.

Even in the 1st half of the twentieth century the town had swagger, with cinemas and an Art Deco club. But the second half of the century has seen bitter brutalist architecture and road-madness ring-road help drive the town into a less desirable location. A loss in confidence in placemaking until the Swine-ford began to decay. And yet urban forest emerges, and with it joy. 

What effect will Crossrail east-west rail have on London, compared with the 19th-century rail-powered expansion of the city?

A photo of The East Portal, Primrose Hill Tunnel, London's first railway tunnel, constructed by Robert Stephenson and completed in 1837. Considered the architectural achievement of the day (e.g. the Crossrail tunnel of its era?). Photo by the very accomplished Louis Berk Flickr photo  Louis Berk Website and blog


Railways transformed and are still transforming the London landscape in ways that cars could never approximate. Before the railways, London was a compact, walkable, city. Click here for a map of London at the beginning of the 19th century  By the late 19th century London was a truly modern heaving metropolis, thanks to the spread of the railways Click Here for 1883 rail map
and read http://provokehistory.blogspot.com/2011/04/growth-of-19th-london.html
The BBC had a recent radio programme comparing Marc Brunel's first tunnel beneath the Thames with that of a massive rail project, designed to reduce (for instance) Canary Wharf rail times to Heathrow, at a cost of around 15billion GBP For more on Crossrail click here   To Visit the Brunel Museum on the south side of the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe Click Here


click for BBC IPlayer Long View Programme on Brunels Tunnel and Crossrail

Jonathan Freedland takes the Long View of the fate of grand building projects at times of economic uncertainty.

The importance of major transport infrastructure schemes is much in the headlines, with the Government's confirmation of plans to build a new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. But while the reality of an HS2 line is still some way off, a very real project is now well underway beneath London, carving out the massive London Crossrail network, which will link Heathrow Airport with the financial heart of the capital.

This scheme has taken many years for work even to start. But, as Jonathan discovers, such struggles have a long history.

Back in the 1820s, a similarly grandiose scheme - a North-South tunnel under the River Thames - was getting underway, and hitting problems and protestations.

Jonathan is joined by contributors including leading columnist Sir Simon Jenkins, and former Transport Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequeur Alistair Darling, who gave Crossrail the green light.

Is the 'can-do' attitude of the great Victorian engineers something we can learn from today - or was it really little more than a myth?

Savage Messiah: ---Black Country. Scorched circles on the dead gro...

Laura Oldfield Ford is a Leeds-exile who wanders the back passages of darkest East London from her Hackney base and draws images and takes notes recording impressions, memories meanings in the real landscape we live in... I can vouch for it as a represntation of my landscape. BUT NOW she's ventured up to WALSALL! Blimey, you just don't get folk going to the Black Country. "Anyroadup she ay arf bad - in fact the wench con drawer and 'er knows 'er stuff. Psychogrography that's the Black Country if ever I heard it... "
Her Blog says
Savage Messiah: ---Black Country. Scorched circles on the dead gro...: Allow but a little consciousness.
 To be conscious is not to be in time
 But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, 
The mo...

And you can hear the wench chat  on Saturday 25 February 2011, 2pm at
http://www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/there-is-a-place

Join Laura Oldfield Ford as she discusses her new work inspired by her walks or 'drifts' in and around Walsall and presents an alternative view of the town.   

The Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam

The Hajj is a global pilgrimage -- and shows how journey and arrival and place are imbued with meaning. Landscape is not just work v nature, but ideas and faith also 

British Museum  |  26 January - 15 April 2012

50% off with National Art Pass  |  Full venue & entry details

Reem Al Faysal, HajjImage 1 of 6

 

Overview

This exhibition charts the history of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are required to make at least once in their lifetime, if able. It continues the series of large-scale exhibitions at the Museum based around spiritual journeys, which began with The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and continued with Treasures of Heaven.  

Topics include the material culture associated with the pilgrimage, the journeys and main routes by land and sea, Mecca itself and the rituals of the Hajj.

Curator Venetia Porter, writing in the Winter edition of Art Quarterly magazine, sums up the challenge in mounting such an exhibition: 'It was harder to begin to construct a narrative and select the objects than I had originally thought. How could one even begin to convey the vastness of it – people coming from everywhere and across time, the physical context of their journey, the rugged terrain, the very spirituality of it? ... It is often said that the Hajj is key to the understanding of Islam. The ambition is that this exhibition will introduce the subject to those who are intrigued to learn about it. We hope that Muslims who know it better than anyone will feel at ease with what they see.'

Don't miss

The tradition of covering the Ka'ba in textiles has left a rich artistic legacy, and in the section relating to Mecca examples are displayed alongside manuscripts, historic and modern photographs, pilgrimage certificates and souvenirs. Conversely, the tradition of sending a tented structure (or Mahmal) along with the Sinai Peninsula–Red Sea pilgrimage caravan, started by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars in the 13th century, has left few surviving artefacts, and one of the many important loans from the Nasser D Khalili collection is a fine 19th-century example made of red silk with silver and silver-gilt wire embroidery. 

Saudi artists represented include photographer Reem Al Faysal, Ahmed Mater, with his powerful work Magnetism, and Maha Malluh, with her photogram Road to Mecca. The Great Court and Reading Room will host the work of British artist Idris Khan, whose father's Hajj would inspire the artist's sculpture installation Seven Times. 

Landscapes of Desire: Parks, Colonialism and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland. January 2012 Lecture.

Irish Landscape Institute Lecture Series 2012: January Lecture

The ILI events committee is happy to announce the first lecture in its 2012 series.

Landscapes of Desire: Parks, Colonialism and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland
Dr. Joanna Brück, UCD School of Archaeology

Wednesday January 25th 2012 at 6.30pm
Pearse St. Library, Dublin 2

Dr. Bruck will speak on the creation of public parks as a response to the social and political conditions of the Victorian and Edwardian period. From the 1830s onwards, there was growing concern regarding the lack of green spaces, clean air and recreational opportunities for those dwelling in towns and cities. The processes of urbanisation and industrialisation resulted in dramatic social and economic changes. In an Irish context, such concerns were particularly acute because of the complex relationships between class, religion and politics as the nationalist movement grew in popularity and strength.

Admission is free and all are welcome.
Please RSVP to: ili@irishlandscapeinstitute.com to confirm your seat.