Bishkek - Brutal & Beautiful

The capital of the Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek, is a city of concrete on an Altaic plain - altitude 2,600 feet - just north of the Ala-Too portion of the Tian Shah mountain range, which boasts peaks over 15,900 feet. A dramatic setting for a time capsule of concrete Soviet Brutalist architecture.

The Kyrgyz Republic gained its political independence from the USSR in 1991. The White House, of seven storeys and faced with marble, was built just six years previously. Originally the headquarters of the Communist Party's Central Committee for the sometime Kirghiz 'Republic', it is now the presidential offices.



On Ala-Too (once Lenin) Square is the Historical (once Lenin) Museum, of 1984. The square is enormous, designed to both impress and intimidate, but the surface is subject to subsidence due to poor substrate. Out the back of the museum is the giant statue of Lenin that previously stood out front, but now points into history.

































Appended to the headquarters of Kyrgyz Telecom, also the post office, is a tower that houses a clock presented by Armenia in 1984. This broke down in 2000 and was silent until 2013. It sounds exactly like the Great Clock of the Palace of Westminster.

On Togolok Moldo Street is the National Centre of Cardiology and Internal Medicine, the centrepiece of the republic's efforts to rebuild its healthcare system, which has suffered due to sharp cuts in expenditure since 1991. The UK's hospitals often look brutal unintentionally. This is the real deal.

Hand-in-hand with health often goes sport. The nearby Sports Palace (above) was built in 1974 as part of the modernisation of the city, and is Bishkek's largest indoor venue, with seating for 2,500. The statue is of Kojomkol, born 1889, seven feet five inches tall, and famous for his feats of strength.

Bishkek is a bustling place, without being manic, and there are plenty of signs of a café life for the well-heeled. Yet the residential areas are largely of Soviet bloc blocks, architecturally interesting, even beautiful, but not necessarily much fun in which to live. The Ala-Too Cinema, likely of the late 1960s, adds some colour.

Istanbul - Blue Mosque

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque because of the dominant colour of the interior decoration, must be one of the most visited buildings on the planet, but no pre-reading prepares for its calm, stunning beauty.

The mosque was built in just seven years, starting 1609, on the orders of Ahmed I, upon the site of the palace of Byzantium's emperors. The architect, Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, designed an extraordinarily grand space composed of a main dome surrounded by eight smaller domes. The mosque boasts six minarets, instead of the normal maximum of four, the first to do so.

The interior is simply gorgeous, over 20,000 handmade ceramic tiles from Iznik (Nicaea) at the lower levels and upon the massive piers, the decorative scheme at higher levels executed in paint. There are over 200 subtle stained glass windows. Humankind be praised.

Istanbul - Balat

Balat, traditionally a Jewish quarter, is a part of the Fatih district of Istanbul. It is located on the western side of the Golden Horn, and forms part of the old city of the peninsular, the erstwhile Byzantium and Constantinople.

The Jews began to leave Balat after the major earthquake of 1894, and the quarter is an intriguing mix of grandeur and neglect, some buildings holding up others. Few tourists make it from the grand bazaar to this quarter, but more should. Ruin porn at its best.

Anderton Boat Lift, Northwich

The Weaver Navigation was completed in 1734, allowing swift transportation from the Cheshire 'salt towns' to the River Mersey. In 1777 opened the Trent and Mersey Canal, at Anderton close to, but fifty feet above, the navigation, and providing a connection to Stoke-on-Trent. In 1793 a basin was excavated on the north side of the navigation, enabling goods to be trans-shipped by crane and inclined plane. To address significant traffic growth, the engineer Edward Leader Williams designed a lift of two counterbalancing water-filled caissons, supported by interconnected hydraulic rams: additional water need only be added to one caisson for this to descend and its twin to rise, with fine adjustments requiring just a 10hp steam engine.

The hydraulic engineer Edwin Clark undertook the detailed design. The caissons, each 75 feet long, 15.5 feet wide, 9.5 feet deep, and weighing 252 tons when filled, were supported by hydraulic rams - hollow cast iron pistons, 50 feet long and three feet in diameter, inside buried cast iron chambers of the same length but of 5.5 feet diameter. The original superstructure consisted of just seven hollow cast iron columns, to guide the caissons, connecting at the top to a 165 feet long wrought iron aqueduct, gated at each end. The ride took three minutes, although were a caisson raised or lowered independently, using only the power of the steam engine, this extended to 30 minutes. Construction commenced in 1872, and the lift opened in 1875.

Unfortunately, canal water was used as the hydraulic fluid, and the rams corroded badly. The engineer Colonel Saner designed a replacement system of electric motors, wires, counterweights and pulleys to allow each caisson to move independently. The superstructure was strengthened by the addition of steel A-frame buttresses, and 36 cast iron counterweights, of 14 tons each, were installed. The pulleys were driven by a 30hp motor. The conversion work was undertaken between 1906 and 1908.

The lift closed in 1983 due to the discovery of extensive corrosion in the superstructure, but was fully restored between 2000 and 2002. Although the headgear and buttresses of 1906-8 remain in place - the weights form a children's maze nearby - the lift once again operates hydraulically, using oil-filled rams to drive each of the caissons separately. The Anderton and the Falkirk Wheel are the only operational boat lifts in the UK.

Wallerscote Island, Northwich

Between the River Weaver (bottom of above picture) and the Weaver Navigation stands, on Wallerscote Island, the last remaining part of the giant soda ash works that once dominated Northwich. Brunner Mond was founded in 1873, built its chemical works in Winnington, by the navigation, and produced its first soda ash - sodium carbonate, used in glass making, dyeing, detergents and cooking - in 1874.

BM became a limited company in 1881 and grew like Topsy, was one of the five largest soda ash producers in the world. In 1926 it joined with the British Dyestuffs Corporation, Nobel's Explosives Ltd, the United Alkali Company, and many smaller enterprises, to form Imperial Chemical Industries - the once mighty ICI.

The Brunner Mond name reappeared in 1991, when ICI divested itself of its UK and Kenya soda ash businesses. The new BM grew once more, and in 2010 acquired British Salt, a provider of one of the key ingredients of soda ash. BM was itself acquired by Tata Chemicals in 2005, and rebranded as Tata Chemicals Europe.

The main chemical plant was the other side of the Weaver, and from this led conveyor belts, running in a huge gantry over the river, to the storage, packing and loading facility on Wallerscote Island. The main plant closed in the 1980s, and has already been bulldozed - the two last photographs are taken from where it once stood. Tata closed its Northwich operation in 2013, blaming the price of gas, and the Wallerscote Island facility is being run down before demolition.

Nottingham's Rive Gauche

The Wilford Suspension Bridge crosses the River Trent to link West Bridgford and the Meadows area of Nottingham. Although the bridge can be used by pedestrians, this is at the discretion of its private owners, Severn Trent Water. It was built by the Nottingham Corporation Water Department, to a design by architect Arthur Brown, principally to carry a water main to the nearby Wilford Hill reservoir, and opened in 1906.

Adjoining the 1¼ mile long Victoria Embankment, constructed between 1898 and 1901, stands Nottingham's principal war memorial. This, and the associated memorial gardens, was laid out on land donated in 1920 by Nottingham's most famous son, Sir Jesse Boot, he of Boots the Chemist.

Work on the gardens and memorial commenced in 1923. Both opened on 11 November 1927, nine years after Armistice Day. The memorial, designed by the City Engineer of the day, T Wallis Gordon, is truly monumental, a trio of archways flanked by colonnades, all in Portland stone, with a terrace behind that overlooks the gardens.

The Orthodox cross-like ornamental pond has recently been renovated at the expense of a private benefactor. Unfortunately, the statue of Queen Empress Victoria, relocated from the bottom of the city centre's Market Street, is surrounded by an ugly anti-vandal fence.

Nearby stands a beautiful little Moderne bandstand of 1937, which was threatened with demolition by the City Council as part of its flood defence scheme, but is now protected by a Grade II listing.

Karan Anne Porter

Thursday 4 March 1965 to Wednesday 4 February 2009.
Photograph: University of Lancaster, 1988.

First Chermayeff Ekco

The architect Serge Chermayeff designed four of Ekco's Bakelite cabinets - the AC86 of 1935, the AC77 of 1936, and the AC64 and this, the AC74, both of 1933. The set was available in alternating current, direct current (DC74) and battery (B74) versions, and two colours - the pictured 'walnut' and black and chromium. It features a light beam and shadow tuning indicator. The station indicator strips, of engraved celluloid, are affixed by pairs of metal studs over the permanent wavelength scales beneath, and could be changed as new radio stations appeared. A wooden stand was available for the 'walnut' version of the set, and a chromed tubular steel stand for the black and chrome version.

The Folly of Hope

Alan Terrill runs the website of the Folly Fellowship. He and his wife Claire live in the Hope Valley, near to Minsterley, Shropshire, where their garden is itself home to a couple of follies, plus various welded metal animals. One of the follies is a shed in the guise of a tin tabernacle, its front influenced by the spa building in Tenbury Wells.

The tortoise tunnel was built, in rendered blockwork, into the side of the steep garden. At one end is a round room, about six feet across, the roof of which was formed using the top of an old circular gazebo. The sides of this were used as a former for the tunnel roof, a painted Gothic arch about six feet above ground level.

The façade of the tunnel was built up with sandbags, over which is mortared stone from the nearby stream. Sedum matting was pinned over the top. The tunnel has a solid floor, that part in the round room sporting a mosaic in the pattern of a tortoise shell. The exterior of the room's roof is a three-dimensional mosaic in the shape of a tortoise, the head and legs of which were fabricated from wood covered with lead sheet.

Alan plans to build, in wood, a tower at the currently open end of the tunnel, likely about twenty feet tall, and in the shape of the grain elevators of Saskatchewan. This will look great against the background of the wood-clad house, almost Alpine in its lime green woodstain.

Limassol, Cyprus - Town

With a population of just over 100,000, Limassol - also Lemesos, its older name - is the largest town in Cyprus. The town is one of contrasts, touristy lanes in the centre and the more interesting dusty corners of the area immediately outside this.

Limassol makes a strong claim to be one of the oldest continuously-inhabited towns in the world, its roots stretching back to 2000 BCE.

Richard the Lionheart, on his way to the third crusade, called here in 1191, when Cyprus came under the control of the Anglo-Normans. It was sold a year later to the Templars.

It can seem as though everyone has controlled Cyprus at some time. The French, the Venetians, the Ottomans, and again the British, from 1878. The British Sovereign Areas of the island remain a key military asset.

Limassol's role as a tourist destination took off when the Turkish invasion of 1974 lead to Famagusta and Kyrenia, the previous key resorts, being occupied. They continue so, in defiance of numerous United Nations resolutions.

Limassol, Cyprus - Carnival

Limassol is home to a number of festivals, principal amongst which is Carnival, which lasts for a full ten days.

Like all good celebrations, Carnival is pagan in origin. There is much eating, drinking and otherwise making merry.

Carnival commences with King Carnival, heading a large parade of wood, chicken wire and papier-mâché characters on floats, akin to the tableaux of Lewes Bonfire.

There follow fancy-dress balls and competitions, masquerade parties, folk dancing, and more eating and drinking.

Cyprus Car Graveyard

In eastern Cyprus, on the road north from Dhekelia, towards Achna, is a house-cum-workshop surrounded by dozens of British, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Japanese and American cars of the 1960s onwards, awaiting restoration.

Many are in remarkable condition, and could be easily recommissioned, including a lovely Mercedes 220 (top). There are at least half a dozen Audis: 80s, 100s, an 80 Fastback (above), a 5S, a couple of proper early Quattros, and a muscular Coupé (below).

The Brits are represented by a Triumph 2000 and a number of Jaguars, including two XJS V12s; one set of the colonial cousins by a Chevrolet Beretta, a Lincoln and a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro (below, identified by Rupert Lloyd Thomas); and another set by a couple of Holdens, one a Premier 202 (next below).

The dry conditions have been kind to very many of the cars, which whilst most have suffered some form of accident damage, it would be nice to think might again see the open road. There are quite a few Volvos, including a beautiful P1800 ES, in that icy blue that so suits them.

It is to those Italian cars that are so prone to rot to which the weather has been most kind. Fiat is represented by a 130, a 131S and a 132. There's a bevy of Alfa Romeos, including an early Spider and a pair of Alfettas, the paintwork of one well protected by foliage (below).

One might expect the Saabs to have survived without difficulty - these include a 95 (below) and a 99. Even a Datsun ST is still in one main piece.

It is though on behalf of the French machinery that one is most grateful to the weather. The collection includes a Citroën CX, a Peugeot 604 V6, and no fewer than two instances of the stunning Citroën DS Pallas (below).

First Bakelite Ekco

Ekco's first Bakelite-cased radios were the 312 and the 313, both released in 1930. At this time Ekco, the first wireless manufacturer to make Bakelite cabinets, had these moulded for it by Allgemeine Elektricitätz-Gesellschaft (AEG). The company installed its own presses, under AEG supervision, at its Southend-on-Sea factory in 1931, upon the imposition of high import taxes. The exquisitely-detailed cabinet of the 313, which was available from July 1930 in mahogany (this example), special order medium oak, and special order dark jade, was designed by L. Smithers. 

The set had a drum-drive scale, was available in AC (pictured) and DC versions, and cost £22.10s.0d. One then had to buy a loud-speaker. There were two options, the pictured moving-iron cone LS1 Ekcone, at £5, or the moving-coil LS2 Ekcoil, at £11. The wireless and cheapest speaker would have cost over ten weeks' of the average wage of the time, putting it out of reach of all but the most affluent. 84 years on, this 313 is in remarkable, and full working, condition.

Hobbit Mill

Birmingham was once home to innumerable watermills. Grade II-listed Sarehole Mill, on the River Cole in Hall Green, is one of only two left. The mill was founded in 1542, and has gone by various names, including Bedell's Mill and High Wheel Mill. Its true fame lies in it having been leased by the industrialist Matthew Boulton, who used it for rolling iron and drawing wire.

































The current building, of 1771, post-dates Boulton's use of the site, and was operated until 1919. The period after WWI saw the ending of very many ways of life that had previously seemed resistant to major change. JRR Tolkein lived immediately nearby as a child, and the mill is cited as inspiration for that in The Lord of the Rings' Hobbiton. Tolkein would be appalled by all the litter in and along the Cole.