Echo of Another Time

The upright Ekco AD77 tabletop radio of 1936 was designed by Serge Chermayeff, one of the architects behind the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. It was possibly the first radio to have an angled tuning dial that ran almost the full width of the cabinet. The set was available in both walnut (pictured) and black Bakelite, and in AC-only (AC77), battery (B67) and accumulator/vibrator (BV67) versions. A different radio, the AC-only AW87, was housed in the same cabinet. Best enjoyed in evening dress and with a Sobranie Cocktail.

Aquatic Pushmi-pullyu

Awaiting fit-out on the Montgomery Canal is this new trip boat. It is of a pushmi-pullyu design, enabling the horse (or possibly pair of donkeys) that will provide the motive power to tow from both ends, without winding of the boat.

Backdraft

Domestic hairdryers originate from the 1920s, but didn't take off until after WWII. This Ormond E1022 dates from the 1950s, and was made by the Ormond Engineering Company of Clerkenwell, London, who also manufactured radio components. Upmarket versions came in a Bakelite vanity case, complete with mirror and comb.

The hairdryer is made from compression-moulded phenol formaldehyde. These polymers were invented by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland, from whence comes the name Bakelite - phenol formaldehyde mixed with a wood flour filler. Urea can be substituted for the phenol, which produces a cream-coloured polymer, in which the Ormond was also available.

The Bridge

Runcorn Bridge crosses the Manchester Ship Canal and the River Mersey, and links Runcorn and Widnes. Opened in 1961, it replaced the Widnes-Runcorn Transporter Bridge, of which latter bridge type only those in Newport and Middlesbrough remain in use. 

It has been known as the Runcorn-Widnes Bridge, the Runcorn Bridge, and, since widening work was completed in 1977, Silver Jubilee Bridge. Locally it is known, and signed, simply as The Bridge.

Grade II listed, the bridge is of the through arch type, with a main arch span of 1,082 feet. The through arch ties the side spans of 250 feet each into the main span, to enable the structure to cope with adverse vibration set up by the adjacent railway bridge.

The bridge provides for 80 feet of headroom for the ship canal, and when first completed had the third longest steel-built arch span in the world. Its 5,900 tons of steel, held together with 720,000 rivets, requires a regular re-coat of 6,000 gallons of minty green paint.

Not Much Room

A fine patch of common Cortinarius. This is a very broad genus, found all over the world, and embracing over 2,000 species. Without the mycorrhizal fungi there would be no plants, over 95% of which are known to be dependent on fungus to draw nutrients from the soil. No fungi, no plants; no plants, no animal life.

TV Times

The LV20 was introduced by Pye in 1949, just three years after television broadcasts were re-commenced in Britain. A full nine inches of entertainment.

The same screen size but a world away design-wise, Bush’s TV22, released in June 1950, is a Bakelite icon. Although cheaper than a set in a wooden cabinet, at 42 guineas including purchase tax it still represented a significant outlay. This was the first set the owner could tune to one of five BBC 'channels.' These were regional transmitting stations, the two of 1950 plus three more operational by 1953. Commercial television arrived in September 1955, on an entirely different frequency band.

That's Livin' Alright

Most manufacturers of steam rollers made living vans, designed to be towed behind the roller to site, and lived in until the job was done. The vans also have an association with the travelling community, particularly showmen. This fine example sits at the foot of Lyth Hill, near Shrewsbury. Auf wiedersehen pet.

Wenlock Priory

The priory at Much Wenlock has been founded twice over. It was originally founded in 680 by the Mercian king, Merewalh. Nepotism saw his daughter, Milburga, installed as abbess, whose convenient raising to sainthood served to bring in funds.

The Normans refounded Wenlock as a Cluniac priory. There are remains of the thirteenth-century priory church, and of a beautifully blind-arcaded chapter house of circa 1140. The infirmary wing survived the Dissolution of 1540, and remains intact as a private residence (above).

In the cloister garth is a 16-position lavabo (top), ornamented with carvings of the twelfth century, used for the washing of hands before entering the nearby refectory. It is now surrounded by a number of topiary forms.

Gilt-edged

Bush introduced the VHF61, with medium (MW), long (LW) and very high frequency (VHF) wavebands, in August 1956. It employs piano key switches, very fashionable at the time, to switch between these. It also sports a green ‘magic eye’ signal strength indicator, a miniature cathode ray tube, framed by an escutcheon of a highly futuristic shape. High class luxury.

Shropshire's Lake District

The Mere at Ellesmere is the largest of nine glacial lakes in the area, and is one of the largest meres outside of the Lake District. The other meres of 'Shropshire's Lake District' are Blakemere, Colemere, Crosemere, Hanmer Mere, Kettlemere, Newtonmere, Sweatmere, and Whitemere.

































The mere was formed at the end of the last Ice Age, when retreating glaciers shed huge blocks of ice that became isolated and, upon melting, left large depressions. An artificial island was formed in 1812, and named Moscow Island in recall of Napoleon's contemporaneous retreat from Russia. Around the mere are a number of sculptures.

Karan Anne Porter

Thursday 4 March 1965 to Wednesday 4 February 2009.
Photograph: University of Lancaster, 1985.

Chirk Castle - Aged Oak

There grewe an aged tree on the greene,

A goodly Oake sometime had it bene,

With armes full strong and largely displayd,

But of their leaues they were disarayde:

The bodie bigge, and mightely pight,

Throughly rooted, and of wonderous hight:

Whilome had bene the king of the field,

And mochell mast to the husband did yielde,

 

And with his nuts larded many swine.

But now the gray mosse marred his rine,

His bared boughs were beaten with stormes,

His toppe was bald, and wasted with wormes, 

His honor decayed, his braunches sere.

Edmund Spenser, 1597: The Shepheardes Calendar - Februarie.

Bush Mechanics

Based in London's Shepherds Bush for the first four years of the company’s life, Bush Radio was founded in 1932. The DAC90 was introduced in 1946 and marketed as a second set for households, much as smaller televisions are marketed today. Early sets had a cloth speaker grille, changed to expanded wire mesh in 1948.

The DAC90A, pictured, was released in 1950, with production continuing until 1955. Both the 90 and the 90A were also available in off-white urea formaldehyde. It’s a chunky design, 11 inches wide, nine inches high, and seven inches deep. Classic 1950s.

(Lower photograph by Esther Bubley)

Wrested Back from Nature

Wrest Park, in Bedfordshire, is a secret garden on a monumental scale. The estate was home to the de Greys from the thirteenth century right through to 1917. The Manor House, completed in 1839, was designed in the eighteenth-century French style, by Thomas de Grey.

There were an immense 92 acres of formal gardens, inspired by those of Versailles, enclosed within seemingly endless walls, cornered by pavilions (top). Over the decades since 1917 the gardens have largely been lost. English Heritage gained control of the site in 2006, and in 2010 commenced a twenty year restoration programme.

In the garden, the initial focus is on the Rose, American and Italian gardens, the French parterre, and restoration of the miles of paths. There are also an orangery and a pavilion associated with a bowling green. For now, other than at weekends, all that can be seen is a vast, tantalising, enclosing wall.

Jukebox Jive

Justus P. Sjöberg left Sweden for America, aged just 16, in 1887. In 1902 he formed J.P. Seeburg Co., an Anglicised form of his name, to make automated pianos. The company’s first jukebox, the eight-disc Audiophone, arrived in 1928. A decade later Seeburg, making use of translucent plastic panels, released the Symphonola, the first illuminated jukebox.

The Select-O-Matic, introduced in 1949, was revolutionary. It provided for the selection of 100 tracks from 50 records; and the 1950 Model B (this example owned and beautifully restored by Andi Blount) was the first jukebox to play 45rpm records (“singles”). One play for a nickel (5¢), two for a dime (10¢), and six for a quarter (25¢).

Hawarden, Flintshire

William Ewart Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister, was a voracious reader, and collected books from his childhood. Whilst at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he took a double first in Classics and Mathematics, and another first in History, his collection grew apace.

Gladstone’s collection ultimately consisted of 32,000 volumes, of which the Grand Old Man read an incredible 22,000, a book a day, every day, for 60 years. In 1889 a pair of corrugated iron rooms, known as the Tin Tabernacle, was erected to house the library for public use – there is a famous photograph of Gladstone moving books from Hawarden Castle the half mile to their new home, using a wheelbarrow.

When Gladstone died in 1898 a public subscription funded the building in which the residential library is now housed, designed by John Douglas, and opened in 1902. The collection has grown to over 250,000 books, largely theology, history, philosophy, classics and literature.

The library, in front of which is the Gladstone Monument, intended for Dublin but refused by that city’s council, centres the village of Hawarden. For the bad is the House of Correction of the mid-eighteenth century (third photograph); for the good, Hawarden Park, entered via heavy wooden gates.

An Ekco of Lost Style

Ekco, E(ric) K(irkham) Cole Ltd, manufacturer of radio and television sets, was founded in 1926. Its Bakelite cabinets were pressed by AEG, in Germany, but high import duties introduced in 1931 encouraged Ekco to invest in its own presses, under AEG control, at its Southend-on-Sea factory. To counter any notion that Bakelite cases were a poor substitute for wooden ones, Ekco had these designed by leading Art Deco and International Style architects.

These included Wells Coates (Isokon building, Hampstead) and Serge Chermayeff (De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea). The Ekco AC (alternating current) 85 of 1934 is said to have been designed in-house, but was either by, or heavily influenced by, Coates. It was available in mottled brown, as in this example, black and chromium, and a very rare ivory (just one known). Options were an AC/DC version (AD85), a battery version (B85) and a wooden stand. Art Deco radio at its best, enough to inspire extravagantly fast behaviour.

Little Chef, the UK's Diner

Little Chef was started in 1958 by Sam Alper, sculptor and printmaking enthusiast, viticulturalist, and, like Airstream's Wally Byam, designer and booster of caravans. The first Little Chef was in Reading, Berkshire, modelled on diners seen by Alper in the USA. The chain ultimately grew to over 430 outlets. It passed through numerous hands, and by the mid-1970s was synonymous with dire food and terrible service; one stopped only if there really was no choice.

Chef Heston Blumenthal proved to be the company's saviour, introducing in 2009 both a new menu and a refit, starting with the outlet in Popham, Hampshire. The brand's mascot, Fat Charlie, was slimmed down, as was the chain, to about 115 outlets. That outside Shrewsbury is one of a dozen so far refurbished in line with Blumenthal's designs. Not quite an American diner, but a good UK simulacrum.

Llyn Clywedog

Clywedog Dam, high above Llanidloes, was built between 1964 and 1967 to regulate the flow of water in the upper reaches of the River Severn. At the time of completion it was the tallest mass concrete buttress dam in Britain, standing an impressive 235 feet high.









752 feet long, the dam, which has a convex form facing upriver, retains 11,000 million gallons of water. The reservoir is six miles long, 212 feet deep at maximum fill, and has a surface area of 615 acres.

In support of the dam, 15 miles of road were constructed or relaid; two new bridges were built; and a subsidiary dam, the 40 foot high earthen-cored and stone-faced Bwlch y Gle, was constructed to prevent the reservoir spilling around the sides of Bryn y Fan hill.

Bryntail Mine, Powys

At the foot of Clywedog Dam are the remains of Bryntail mine, one of many in the area that started out with the winning of lead ore and, over time, moved onto the extraction of barytes. There were three principal shafts here, Murray, Western, and Gundry.

Most of the extant buildings are associated with Gundry Shaft, and are clearly but unobtrusively labelled, enabling one to easily follow the processes that would have been operated.

There are two waterwheel pits, extensive remains of the leats that would have fed water to these (top), a couple of cottages, stone-built ore bins, and numerous settling tanks, constructed from massive stone slabs bolted together (middle).