Stockport Air Raid Shelters

Stockport's civilian air raid shelters, although far from being the largest in the land as claimed by the city's museum, did open in good time, in October 1939, the month after war was declared. Construction had commenced in September 1938, a rare instance of local authority foresight.

Cut into the soft red sandstone that underlies the city, the shelters provided accommodation for up to 6,500 people. Seven feet high and with a total length of just under a mile, the shelters were fitted out with benches, bunk beds, warden posts, first aid posts, small canteens, tool stores, male and female toilets, and electric lighting.

This was 'plush' by WWII air raid shelter standards, and led to the section of the shelters that can be visited by the public being nick-named the Chestergate Hotel. The nearby Brinksway and Dodge Hill shelters are not accessible to the uninitiated. The shelter complex was essentially closed by 1943.

Loopwheels - Reinventing the Wheel

Loopwheels, made by Jelly Products Ltd, of Boughton in Nottinghamshire, are wheels for bicycles and wheelchairs that incorporate suspension into the wheel itself. The wheels have no spokes but, instead, six paired springs of carbon composite, fixed between the hub and the rim. They flex to accommodate unevenness in the ground over which they run, and even kerbs.

The springs, which allow the rim to travel up to two inches, serve also to reduce road noise and vibration, a perennial problem for users of small-wheeled bicycles - Loopwheels for bicycles are 20 inches in diameter. As the wheel itself provides suspension, hard tyres can be used, potentially eliminating punctures.

The springs are manufactured by KG Archery. Naturally, those of rear Loopwheels have a greater spring rate than those of front ones. The wheels can't unfortunately be fitted to a Brompton - there isn't enough room for the travel between the forks - but a folding Dahon Mu or Vigor will accommodate them.

Loopwheels were invented by Sam Pearce, a mechanical engineer and industrial designer. He got the idea in 2007, when he saw a mother pushing a buggy up a kerb, which caused the child on board to jolt forward. Sam's first prototype, made of wood and sections of plastic drainpipe, was made in 2009. The first generation of the product now available was launched in 2013.

MAMCO, Geneva

The Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, MAMCO, is to be found in the Bains district of Geneva, Switzerland.

In the main the exhibits pale into insignificance against the beauty of the building, which started life as a fabric factory.

The museum opened in 1984. One of the first exhibits was a set of four works in neon tubing, reading ART, TEXT, LIGHT and SIGN (below).

Royal Mail Special Stamps - Bridges

On 5 March 2015 Royal Mail published a set of special stamps, on the subject of UK bridges. The design of the special issue was undertaken by Gregory Bonner Hale. GBH approached YMGW in November 2013 with a request to use an image of the Humber Bridge. The image has been utilised in the background of the reverse of the special issue presentation pack.

Karan Anne Porter

Thursday 4 March 1965 to Wednesday 4 February 2009.
Photograph: with Belinda Ramsden, Fulham, 1990.

Arākī in Amsterdam

An exhibition of work by Nobuyoshi Araki, the prolific Japanese photographer famous for his images of kinbaku, at Foam, the Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam.

Hill Close Gardens, Warwick

A survivor from the early Victorian period, Hill Close Gardens is an inter-linked group of partitioned leisure gardens that run up the hillside from Bread and Meat Close, Warwick. Edward Wilson, a Warwickshire landowner, partitioned the land in 1845, and by 1866 there were 32 plots.

The plots were originally owned, or sometimes rented, by city families that lived in townhouses without gardens.They were separated from each other by hedges and walls to provide privacy. Many of the plots remained in the hands of the same families for a number of generations. A map of 1886 shows summerhouses built on five of the plots.

The gardens fell into disuse in the early twentieth century, and the local council progressively bought up the land with the intention of building houses. Grade II* listing of four of the summerhouses in 1994 helped a campaign to save the gardens. 18 plots survive, owned by a trust and restored by volunteers. A genuine hidden gem.

Newport - Transporter Bridge

Newport Transporter Bridge is one of only 19 such bridges ever built to completion, worldwide (counting only once the bridge at Bizerta that was rebuilt at Brest). It was one of four built in the UK. To properly qualify as such, a transporter bridge must be a high-level structure that carries a gondola suspended at grade, and leaves the crossed waterway unobstructed. As such, these bridges can be better thought of as aerial ferries. The first working example, Puente Vizcaya, was opened in 1893, between Portugalete and Las Arenas, near Bilbao, Spain, designed by Spaniard Alberto de Palacio and engineered by Frenchman Ferdinand Arnodin, patentee holders.

The Newport aerial ferry was designed to enable workers from the city, on the west side of the River Usk, to reach the developing industries on the east side, without an eight mile round walk. A ferry had operated nearby, but the extreme tidal range made use impossible at low tide. A conventional bridge would have required very long approach ramps to provide for ships to pass beneath, and tunnelling would have been too expensive.

The Borough Engineer, Robert Haynes, arranged for the council to visit the transporter bridge at Rouen, France, opened 1899. The Newport bridge received parliamentary approval in 1900. Arnodin undertook the design, and he and Haynes were appointed joint engineers. The contract was awarded to Alfred Thorne, and the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company. Work commenced on site in 1902, and the bridge opened in September 1906.

The high-level boom, 774 feet long and with a main span of 646 feet, is slung between towers, the tops of which are 243 feet above road level. Rail tracks are carried by the boom, and upon these runs a traveller. In turn from this is suspended a gondola (second photo), pulled across the river at ten feet per second by a continuous cable, the winding of which is powered by two 35 horsepower electric motors. The winding house is situated at the eastern end of the bridge (below). The 1,326 ton steel structure is of the combined suspension and cable-stayed form, a series of three-inch wide suspension cables carried over the top of the towers. The anchorages are each formed of over 2,200 tons of ashlar, their centres 1,545 feet apart.

Grade I-listed in 1982, the bridge was closed in 1985 due to safety concerns. It cost circa £98,700 to build originally, and £3m to refurbish. It re-opened in 1995, only to close again in 2008. A further £1.23m of work enabled the bridge to operate once more from July 2010.

Just nine of the 19 bridges survive. Of these, seven are in use in transporter form: Puente Vizcaya in Spain; Rochefort in France; Osten and Rendsburg in Germany; Newport and Middlesbrough in the UK; and Buenos Aires in Argentina. An eighth, that at Duluth, Minnesota, USA, although still in use, was converted to a lift bridge, reopening as such in 1930. The one other survivor, at Warrington in the UK, lies derelict.

Newport - College of Art

In 1899 Lord Tredegar sold the land of Clarence Place, Newport, Gwent, to enable construction of the Newport Technical Institute. The foundation stone was not though laid until September 1910. From 1958 the building, which boasts a fine copper-covered dome, was the home of Newport College of Art. The site was abandoned in 1996, but has now been converted into apartments.

Newport - West Usk Lighthouse

West Usk Lighthouse was built in 1821 by James Walker, a Scottish civil engineer who went on to build a further 21 lighthouses. Grade II-listed, the lighthouse is of an unusual design, having all the living accommodation ranged about the tower in the form of a drum. Accordingly, all the rooms are wedge-shaped. The norm was for a separate cottage, or separate cottages, for the keepers.

The lighthouse looks out over the River Usk and the Bristol Channel, where the tide is the second fastest in the world. It stood upon an island until 1856, when what is now the surrounding land was reclaimed for farming. The light was decommissioned in 1922, and the building became a private house. It was saved from dereliction in 1987, and now operates as a bed and breakfast establishment.

The Pencil of Nature

The prescription is to take one per day. One photograph of the natural world, taken within the curtilage of the home of youngmangonewest, each full or part day spent in residence, throughout the months of January to October 2015, inclusive. The project demands a separate website, which can be found here. Feedback, and any corrections to identifications, are both very welcome.

Shrewsbury Canal - Wappenshall Junction

Opened in 1796, the Shrewsbury Canal, constructed by Josiah Clowes and, later, Thomas Telford, linked Shrewsbury and Trench. Here an inclined plane provided a link to the canals to and from the coal mines and iron works of east Shropshire. All these canals were designed to take tub-boats, rectangular in plan, 19' 9" long, just 6' 2" wide, and made of riveted wrought iron plates.

In 1835 the Shrewsbury Canal was finally linked to the rest of the national canal network, by means of the Newport Branch of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal. A three-way junction was formed at Wappenshall. The arm from there to Shrewsbury was widened to accommodate the narrowboats used on the Newport Branch, broader in the beam than tub-boats, but the arm to Trench was not.

The Duke of Sutherland had built the two transhipment warehouses that survive at Wappenshall Junction, designed to transfer loads between tub-boats and narrowboats. The largest (above) sat astride a basin that linked the canals, with cargo hoisted through trapdoors into the upper storeys of the building. There is some uncertainty as to whether the warehouses are by James Trubshaw or Telford.

The site also boasts a roving bridge, the curving ramps up to which enabled a towing horse to cross from a towpath on one side of the canal to that on the other without being unhitched. This example is thought to be Telford's work. The Trench incline closed in 1921, the basin in Shrewsbury in 1922, and the Shrewsbury Canal, and Wappenshall Junction, in 1944.

Shrewsbury Canal - Longdon Aqueduct

The Shrewsbury Canal is at Longdon carried over the River Tern, a tributary of the Severn, by means of a cast iron aqueduct - possibly the idea of ironmaster William Reynolds and at least in part designed by Thomas Telford. This is oft-claimed as the first such in the world, but that honour belongs to Benjamin Outram's 44 feet long cast iron Holmes Aqueduct on the Derby Canal, in water by February 1796, just one month ahead of Longdon-upon-Tern.

Telford's 187 feet long, 7' 6" wide, trough was bolted together from sections cast at Reynolds' ironworks at Ketley. It was erected, complete with a cast iron towpath, in place of Josiah Clowes' stone aqueduct, washed away in 1795 before completion. The masonry at each end is of the original aqueduct.

In its design can be seen that later adopted by Telford for the trough of his Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completed in 1805. The Shrewsbury Canal closed in 1944, since when the Longdon-upon-Tern Aqueduct, Grade I-listed and a Scheduled Ancient Monument, has stood stranded amid fields.

Berkhampsted Castle

Berkhampsted is arguably the most important of the early Norman castles: it was here that William the Conqueror received the submission of the English, after the Battle of Hastings. Controlling the northern approach to London, thirty miles away, William's half-brother Robert of Mortain built, circa 1070, a wooden castle, atop a 43 foot motte, surrounded by a huge bailey. The castle is unusual in that it had two surrounding moats.

Thomas à Becket, Lord Chancellor to Henry II, was granted the castle in 1155, when the first stone buildings were erected. The curtain walls too were built under Becket. The castle was though besieged in 1216 by Prince Louis of France. The possibly first use of trebuchets on British soil overcame the defences. The Earls of Cornwall held the castle for much of the 13th century, and the first Duke of Cornwall, the Black Prince, honeymooned there in 1361.

The castle fell into disuse late in the fifteenth century, and declined thereafter. The railway from Euston, built in 1838, cut across the outer earthworks, but the twin trenches remain in good order. The brick cottage that sits inside the castle, still owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, was built in 1865.

Headstone Tithe Barn

Headstone is a moated manor house, built circa 1310, that was once the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, surrendered to Henry VIII in 1546. It is the earliest remaining timber-framed building in Middlesex, and surrounded by the only surviving water-filled moat in the county.

Yet it is not the manor that dominates the site. The nearby tithe barn is 140 feet long and 29 feet high, and entirely framed in oak. Grade II* listed, the barn dates back to 1506. Although called a tithe barn, the building was not actually used to store the Church's decimation of farm produce.

Harrow Council restored the barn in the 1970s, but unsympathetic lighting and heating vents, and inappropriate modern materials, rather spoil the grand interior. The exterior, though, is glorious; and it is hoped that a lottery grant will help fund a new restoration that will put right the mistakes of the past.

The Lady of the North

Northumberlandia, otherwise known, by those familiar with Viz, as the Fat Slag, is an immense land sculpture near Cramlington, north of Newcastle. 1,300 feet long and 112 feet high, the Lady is formed of 1.6 million tons of clay, soil and rock.

All of this came out of the adjoining Shotton open-cast coal mine, the operators of which, the Banks Group, engaged architect and artist Charles Jencks to design something more attractive than the usual levelled slag heaps and water-filled pits.

The Lady is laid out on land owned by the Blagdon Estate, which has been surface mined since 1943. Work began in 2010 and was completed in 2012. Once the slag had been formed it/she was sprayed with seed. There are stone-built viewing platforms upon the forehead and breasts, and at the hip, knee and ankle.

Waste is inherent in mining, and one might as well have a land-form that distantly echoes the tradition of the Long Man of Wilmington and the White Horse of Uffington as another fake hill. At £3 million, it probably also cost the Banks Group and Blagdon Estate less than other forms of landscape restoration.

The Angel of the North

Located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, The Angel of the North, designed by Antony Gormley, is the largest sculpture in Britain - and weighs in at a very earth-bound 220 tons. The strong horizontal form, and the slight forward angling of the wings of the sculpture, which stands just south of Low Fell, assists it to dominate the nearby A1.

This was coal-mining country, and the underlying mines had to be grouted before foundations 66 feet deep, comprising 165 tons of reinforced concrete, could be formed. The statue is just 66 feet tall yet has a wingspan of 177 feet, and has been designed to withstand wind speeds of up to 100 mph. 52 bolts each ten feet long affix the Angel to a concrete plinth 17 feet thick. Intriguingly, the body is hollow, accessible via a hatch on one of the shoulder blades.

Completed in 1998 at a cost of £800,000, the Angel was constructed, by Hartlepool Steel Fabrications Ltd, from 3,153 pieces of steel. It was delivered to site in three parts - the body of 110 tons and the wings of 55 tons each. 88 bolts hold each wing in place. COR-TEN steel and copper alloy was used, two inches thick for the ribs and of a quarter inch for the skin, the surface of which rusts in a predictable manner and doesn't require painting.