Sept 2012: Watford Arches

 

So I am riding down to Watford and beyond, here’s a series of shots of the Watford Arches, a viaduct which is very impressive

But before you do that, you cross this lovely little park. And then you ride down to the right and then turn right again

Here are the Watford arches

There is a retail shopping park

See? quite a lot of big stores there, but nothing much to see on this side of the road, so I ride on to Saint Albans

On the way back, I check out this railway viaduct closely

its massive construction





those Victorians knew how to build their stuff.



It was raining…

And you can see the solidity of the pillars..



And you ride through the arches to find something that’s very interesting.

Its an obelisk standing on the side of the road.



With a very very faded and obscured coat of royal arms.

There must have been a plaque there once.



It was erected here to mark the boundary of London, after this, a duty was paid on any coal brought into this city.

The other side of the arches

The arches haven't been maintained properly, you can see the shrubs taking root on the brickwork..

The place is surrounded with a little park

Approaching the traffic nightmare…you cannot imagine that just 100 meters beyond this cool, calm, quiet, leafy place is one of the most nightmarish traffic junctions in England.

Beautiful, if you ignore the graffiti on the pillars

 
It was tough riding and taking photos…lovely place, none the less..

Photo Essay: St. Paul’s Church in Brighton

I came across this rather interesting church in Brighton. Why interesting you might ask? Well, one can well argue that St. Paul was perhaps the most important and influential member of Jesus' disciples in establishing the Christian Religion and has had an impact vastly more than anybody else. The second is the extraordinary wooden top of the spire. The final reason is that this church is perhaps one of the most notorious and controversial churches in England.

 

Here’s the church. It was opened in 1848 and the cost was met mainly from individuals and other societies. £12,000 it was. Did you know, at that time, pews were rented? So Christianity at that time was frankly a rich man’s religion, at least insofar as church services are concerned.

Here’s the billboard in front. Nice clean design. I liked the simplicity of the board.

This is the Eastern Doorway. There is some reconstruction going on, but the top of the doorway has a statue of St. Paul. Its an exquisite statue indeed.

Here is what I spoke of. The top of the spire is made up of timber. How curious, most of the churches have brick or stone toppings but this one? Timber.

And why you might ask? Well, the basic reason for doing this was that before this tower was constructed in 1873 (this was a later addition to the church), a stone spire of Chichester Cathedral collapsed. So the idea was that a wooden structure would be safer. Not sure about the logic but that meant that 140 years later, a corpulent man with a camera would zoom in and admire the timer carvings of the spire and wonder.

The top of the spire. Nice interesting crucifix as well.

A Big Issue seller sitting in front of the church, hiding his face from me.

One of the tall buttresses which support the soaring walls.

Another view of the extraordinary tower. This church has seen some severe arguments over theological issues, some of whom are explored and described here and here. Decades later, I read these discussions, rioting and debates and think, Good Heavens (pun intended) how stupid are we humans to argue about these things. Looking at the religious arguments bellowing around the globe, I just wonder what my grandchildren will think. Well, I know what they will think. They will think exactly what I think of these ancestors of mine who squabbled over what kind of clothes to wear, that they were idiots. Here is the slideshow.

Photo Essay: An interesting Monument in Brighton

Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert ruled for a long time in the UK and besides straddling the globe with some major historical changes, also left behind a whole clutch of buildings in the UK. Pretty much all the monuments to them are quite interesting, all kudos's to their sponsors, architects and builders. Quite a lot of them were constructed around Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee time in the 1887’s or thereabouts.

While on a day trip to Brighton, I came across this rather interesting monument with some very interesting and unique features. This was all made by a local private businessman who wanted to celebrate the Jubilee.

Here’s the tower in question. Quite a Baroque structure, eh? Almost 100 feet in height, it is made up of various architectural styles and has different kinds of stonework sprinkled around it.

The monument has Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, her son and his wife as round medallions on the centre surrounded with female figures. I couldn't understand what these represented nor could I research and find out anything about them, but looks like they were just for show, vaguely classical Greek statues.

The clock itself, there are four faces. The date is 1887 on the clock face.

Moving further up, you see some rather dispirited children (cant see any wings, so cant be cherubs) sitting between large wreaths and then its topped with a dome like structure with gilding on it.

This time ball is another extraordinary structure. This is made up of copper and this moved up and down the 16 foot mast every hour, based upon electrical signals transmitted from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Imagine constructing the equivalent of an atomic clock back in the 1887 time? Fascinating, these Victorian engineers and inventors. Unfortunately, this seems to have been very noisy and the local inhabitants complained vociferously about the noise. So it was turned off after few years. For those who might know and see the New Year Celebration in NY, the NY Times Square time ball there which counts down the dying seconds of the new year is based upon the same principle.



Then you have two rather unique directional directional pointers. You see two ships with interesting bow spits, but each of them point to a different direction. The top one says, “To Kemp Town” and bottom one says, “To Station”. Never seen anything like this before, but there you go. The close-up allows us to see the anti pigeon spikes and nets on the clock tower.



Here is another view of the clock tower. Its fascinating. I was standing in front of this monument, about 120 years after it was constructed. Sponsored by private money. Accused of being an over engineered salt cellar. Confused architecture. But with great scientific inputs in terms of the time ball. It has stood there in the centre of this town for so many decades and has looked down on so many things that have happened to this little city and millions of its inhabitants. And it has regularly clicked on in its clock. Oh! and the weather vane has shown the direction of the wind for so many decades. Did the original people who first saw this clock tower imagine that 120 years later, a gawking idiot with a camera will be standing and thinking about them? I tried to imagine my descendants in 120 years doing this and failed. Truly time is strange and plays tricks on our perception. Anyway, there you go, the Jubilee Clock Tower in Brighton.

Photo Essay: An old forgotten war memorial in a decrepit decaying square

Brighton as a place was considered to be quite hip at one time in British History. But those days have long gone, it is now full of rancid fish and chips shops, shops selling rock candy and a general air of decay and disarray surrounds the water front and promenade. When I finished photographing the West Pier, I walked up across the road and noticed this war memorial. It was the centre piece of an open rectangle, three sides were of Victorian/Georgian Era houses and the fourth side to the sea was open and centred with this war memorial.

Strange how things line up. We are talking about the Royal Sussex Regiment here which was in turn formed out of the 107th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Light Infantry). This Bengal Light Infantry was originally formed by the East India Company in 1854 and it took park in the Indian Independence/Mutiny of 1857. Following the mutiny, they were moved into the British Army. Here’s the link to me from Bengal, from India, from Indian History, to 2010, me standing in front of this memorial in Brighton. Who knows? who knew? does anybody care? Curiously, it doesnt seem to have done much during that fight even though an Indian Mutiny Medal was struck and presumably given out to the soldiers in large numbers.

A plaque on the left shows where all the regiment was in action. Louisburg and Quebec in Canada were the two areas that one of the ancestors of this regiment fought against the French in 1759. The Battle of Maida was in Italy in 1806 in the Napoleonic Wars where he defeated the French. Incidentally, the London location of Maida Vale is named after this battle.  Then the regiment was sent to Egypt in 1992 to crush the Urabi Revolt and also to help the Khedive in becoming grand Egyptian Poo Bah. This was one of the low points in British History. The same regiment also went up the Nile to try to save General Gordon who was mucking around in Khartoum but arrived 2 days too late. This is the Abu Klea Battle between the regiment and the forces of the Mahdi at Abu Klea Sudan. Incidentally, despite winning the battle, this was a loss and lead to the fall of the British Prime Minister Gladstone.

Then in 1900-1902, it took part in the first ruthless war of the last century, the Anglo Boer War. British Armies invented the scorched earth policy and the concentration camps. This was many moons before all this was even a twinkle in the eyes of the Nazi’s in the 1930’s. I was standing there and thinking about the appropriateness of raising a monument to soldiers in an army who did all this. I wonder what the reaction would be if there were war memorials to the Nazi’s raised in Germany? Truly God is with the winners and big battalions. But many died in this war. More soldiers died from disease than from actual battle. But their names are up there. The regiment went forward and gathered further honours in the Great War 1914-1918 by winning several VC’s. It also participated in World War II and then it was amalgamated into the Queen’s Regiment. 

 

 
Two more images of the monument. After this, I went up a bit to look at the buildings. At some point in history, this must have been the high areas of Brighton where all the hoi-polloi came to town to stay. But now? its run down, the paint is peeling and is generally run down. The garden in the middle is really manky with brown grass. Very sad decrepit decaying square.

 



 
See what I mean? the leprous colour of the paint does not help. And then you have these two buildings on the bottom which stick out like sore thumbs. Good lord, where are the city council people who allowed this excrescences to come up? Totally ruin the entire effect, the little that is left to be affected.

Now standing at the top of the garden and looking down at the memorial and then the remains of the burnt out pier in the background. It really looked very sad. Then I turned to walk off towards the hotel.

Saw this garbage bin parked on the roadside. With a strange notice on the right.

This was wtf on so many levels.

Peeked into the bin. People would crawl into this bin to sleep? Obviously somebody did this before and then was killed because of some event. Now how sad is that?

And then there was a sign saying no parking with a car parked right in front. Enough said about this sad place, eh?

Looking right down the street.



Looking left up the street. Here are more photographs in higher resolution in a slideshow. Felt vaguely dirty and very sad leaving this area, was very pitiful, how the great and wonderful get reduced.