Mappa Mundi

I was in Dover Castle (Kent, UK) on Saturday and spotted an old map on the wall so I was pleased to find a postcard of the map in the Castle shop.  The map on the wall is a replica but I haven't been able to find out of what.  On the back of the card it says it is "the Mappa Mundi" but there are several of them.  According to Wikipedia, any map of the world made during the Middle Ages is a Mappa Mundi.

It shows Europe to the left, Africa to the right and Asia at the top.

A Mappa Mundi for Monday.

Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape

"Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape" is the title of the work by French artist Daniel Buren.  It is in fact an enormous window (in the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate) through which you can see the sea, with mirrors on either side

I bought the postcard myself because I was so impressed by the original.  I've had it two years at least and only picked it out again because of the card from the German Bundestag has a very similar shape to the left of centre.  I've no idea what that shape is but it does look very similar to Daniel Buren's work.

Not in my backyard (NIMBY)

The church in whose backyard there are all those cooling towers is St Edward the Confessor's Church, Brotherton in Yorkshire.  In some accounts I've found, it's described as medieval, in others as 19th century.  According to the National Archives, it has records going back to 1562.  Whichever way you look at it, it's far older than the Ferrybridge B power station which was built in the 1950s and closed in the 1990s.

The photo, taken by Eric de Maré sometime between 1960 and 1980, reminds me of the postcard I bought at Richborough Castle in Kent.  It too shows cooling towers in the background, and they too have now been demolished, though there was a very strong campaign to preserve them.

The first picture comes from a postcard set "Postcards of our Past" issued by English Heritage, the second is also published by them and on sale at the Richborough Castle site.  Maybe someone in English Heritage has a special fondness for cooling towers.  Industrial Heritage in your backyard.

This is a post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the site.

Uniforms - three men and a woman

Not sepia, not suits and not (only) three men.

There is a story behind the postcard.  It is one from a pack sold to raise funds for the Deal Memorial Bandstand Trust which was set up to provide a memorial for the 11 bandsmen who were killed in 1989 by the explosion in the Royal Marines Barracks caused by an IRA bomb.  My neighbour who lives only a few hundred metres away remembers the explosion and resulting uproar very clearly.

There are concerts every Sunday and Wednesday throughout the summer in the bandstand in Deal, Kent, but each July a special Royal Marines concert is held in memory of those bandsmen.  The pictures on the postcards come from the 20th anniversary concert.  This year there will be another anniversary, the 25th.

The three plus one people in the picture are Chelsea Pensioners in their very distinctive uniforms.  This means they live in the Royal Army retirement home, the Royal Hospital Chelsea.  It was only in 2009 that women were first allowed so we must be looking at one of the first here, possibly Winifred Phillips.  The scarlet uniform is worn on ceremonial occasions.

This is a post for Sepia Saturday

Maps on Monday - south of England

It all started here when I spotted a map of the Dover Road which shows a strangely distorted view of Kent. It is marked on the back as copyright Dunlop Rubber Co.  The postage is marked as "1 penny with only "five words of conventional greeting" which dates it anywhere between 1918 and 1940.

This is a more conventional view of Kent, published by Bennett Publications, Lenham

While we are considering map inaccuracies, I can't miss the map showing the Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury.  It caught my attention soon after I had moved house - from Winchester to (near) Canterbury. Do you notice Stonehenge appears next to Canterbury?  Stonehenge is nowhere at all near Canterbury: it's well to the west of Winchester.

It is published by Elgate Postcards sometime after 1971 when the business was set up.  They no longer publish cards.

I don't suppose anyone is likely to use a postcard map as a navigation aid but a little more accuracy would be quite welcome.

More Maps on Monday at Miss You, Wish You Were Here

Deal Castle through the years

Deal Castle, as I've mentioned before, was built in 1539/40 by Henry VIII as part of a chain of castles along the south coast.  When it was built it didn't have the crenellation/castellations along the battlements.  Those were a later addition in the 18th century.  At the same time they added a captain's house which you can see on the right in the lower postcard, which dates from 1911.  The house was demolished but rebuilt in 1802.

Bombing during World War II destroyed the house and fortuitously restored the castle to its original form.

The cards above are still in publication.


A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the Sepia Saturday blog where you can find links to all the other people taking part.

Dover

Two views of the docks of Dover, the first one dating from 1908 and the second from 1915.  The reverse of the first card tells us:

Dover Harbour has of late years been considerably enlarged and is now of great importance.  The Admiralty Pier, at the end of which is an 80 ton gun, runs 1500 feet into the sea.  In addition to the new and old harbours there are the Granville and Wellington docks.

The Granville and Wellington docks have now been developed into a marina, the Eastern Docks are for the cross-channel traffic and the Western Docks have been developed into cruise terminals.

A post for Sepia Saturday.

The pier

Both of these show the pier at Deal which is on the south east tip of Kent, itself on the south east tip of England.  The top postcard of these two is dated 1923 and I suspect the second is much the same date.  Notice the man in the first with binoculars.  It's hard to tell what he could be looking at.

The second card is interesting because at first I thought there was snow on the road (snow is much on my mind at the moment).  It can't be snow of course because of all the people about so I think it must be sand.  That in itself is odd, because the beach is not sandy at all, it is a shingle (pebbled) beach.

The third is dated 1966 and is more or less what the pier looks like today.  Notice the group of men and the two women apparently sheltering near the pier entrance.  I don't think it was a bright and warm day.

A Dutch ship collided with the old pier in 1940 so it had to be demolished.  This new structure was put in place in 1957.  In fact it is the third pier to be here.  A wooden structure was wrecked by gales in 1857.

A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the Sepia Saturday blog where you can find links to all the other people taking part.

Pushing a pram on the prom

The promenade may be a little narrower and the road wider and busier, but Deal (in Kent, England) looks very much the same now as it did then.  I'm not entirely sure what "then" might have been, but maybe someone with an eye for fashion could tell me.  If you click on the image you will see a much larger one.  Although the pier looks the same as it does now, it must be different because it was rebuilt for the third time in 1954. 


You can still see parents pushing their children along beside the sea, although the prams do look very different now.  The most common sight though, is a child being carried while the parent drags/pushes a tricycle or scooter or something similar. No doubt they are failed attempts to encourage a child to move under his or her own steam.

A post for Sepia Saturday. A click on the button will take you to the blog.

Ye Old Chequers then and now

Dated 10 February 1906 (9:45  pm) with a message saying, "Dear M, If anything like fine I will be down tomorrow morning. Yours B."

Imagine that, being able to send a postcard in the evening announcing your arrival the next morning.  Now you would have to post the card during the afternoon, pay extra, and hope it arrived before you.  And it probably wouldn't.

This is what Ye Old Chequers in the the High Street, Tonbridge looks like now.





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The building to the left seems to have been demolished and the one on the right had been done up to match, but otherwise, it's remarkably similar.

Tonbridge used to be spelled Tunbridge but the Post Office decided it should be changed to Tonbridge to avoid confusion with the nearby (Royal) Tunbridge Wells.  Tonbridge, though, is a great deal older than Tunbridge Wells.

The London to Dover railway line.

Two postcards showing the same section of railway on the London to Dover route (or Dover to London, depending on your point of view).  The first one is dated 1907 and the second 1964, and it remains much the same today.  The main differences between the two cards, apart from the weather and the state of the tide, is the shape of the cliff which, like the cliffs nearer Dover, suffers regular landslips.

Although the railway line is still the same these days even though it now takes the high speed train, there have been major changes in this area most of which you can't see.  It is from beneath Shakespeare Cliff that the Channel Tunnel runs.

This is a photo I took myself about a year ago of the other side of the double rail tunnel seen in the two postcards.  The dual entrance is on the left but beside it there is another tunnel.  This one leads from the road above and allows visitors get to the large recreation area which has been made from the waste produced by digging the Tunnel. It is called Samphire Hoe, a lovely  nature reserve where you can walk, picnic, watch birds, butterflies and other wildlife.

A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the blog.

Hopping down in Kent

"I used to love hop-picking when I was a child.  The village children went along with their mothers in the summer holidays (especially late in Kent in those days to allow for the hop picking season)."

The message above is on this 1960s card

Kent, the Garden of England, used to be the main centre of production of hops for the brewing industry.

Hops are climbing plants and were trained up poles and wires.

The harvest season lasted for 6 weeks, from the beginning of September.  It was very labour intensive and whole families would come down from London and elsewhere to work for the season, known as "hopping down in Kent".

Once picked, the hops had to be dried in oast houses, the buildings with conical roofs seen in the background of the second two postcards.

At one time 77,000 acres were devoted to hop farming but foreign imports reduced this to something in the region of 33,000 acres.  Nowadays there is relatively little hop growing  in Kent, though there is still a certain amount (3,000 acres) and the picking is now mechanised.  The reduction of hop growing is mainly the result of modern tastes having changed from beers to lagers.  Brewing lagers uses fewer hops.

Oast houses can still be seen around Kent but most have been converted into private homes and at least one is now a museum.

A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the blog.

The games people play

Seaspeed SRN 4 Hovercraft "Princess Margaret" is operated by British Rail Hovercraft Limited. High speed service crossing between Dover and Boulogne in 35 minutes carrying 30 cars and 250 passengers.

I bought these two cards (dated 1976) for three reasons:  I live nearby these routes; I've travelled on a hovercraft on a number of occasions (and happy not to do so again); the services have been discontinued.

You may wonder where the connection is with games, and the answer lies in the message on the reverse of the second, a message from Roland to a mystery woman.

My rough and ready translation:

Thank you for your little card.  I could hardly believe it.  While waiting for the boat to Holland, I'm thinking of you a lot and I'm taking the opportunity to tell you.  I hope that we will be able to see each other again soon, now that school has gone back.  Watch the little square by the bridge carefully in the morning when taking your children to school.  I can't wait to kiss you, so that you have lovely dreams.  See you one of these days and I hope we will have more time.  Kisses.  Roland.

Oooooh.  I wonder what sort of a game was going on here?

The other card had a message too: "Please ask the milkman to leave me an extra pint". Not quite so interesting.

A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the blog.

A place of entertainment

The Pavilion in Deal, Kent, I have found out from the Kent History Forum, was opened in 1928 but unfortunately was never a success. I have found references to boxing matches being held there.

The first postcard is unused but the second is dated 1932, only a year before the failing building was transformed into a cinema, the Regent.  That was successful enough for a time and continued operating during the war in spite of being beside the sea.   In the war years, a powerful searchlight was placed on the roof.

In 1963 the cinema was closed and the building then became a bingo hall.  That in turn closed and the Regent sits empty waiting for a new life.

Photo from Jim Linwood/Flickr

A post for Sepia Saturday.  A click on the button will take you to the blog.

Bandstands, ancient and modern

Cliftonville bandstand still exists though it's a modern reconstruction of the original Victorian one shown on this card dated 1908.  Cliftonville is a very near neighbour of Margate, once the holiday destination of choice for many Londoners.  In the foreground you can see a row of deckchairs.  Margate was the first resort (in 1898) to offer deckchairs for hire. Incidentally the town was also the first to have donkey rides on the beach (1890). 

The Deal bandstand no longer exists.  This unused card was published by JW&S Portsmouth who were publishing from 1903 to 1914.  I think the bandstand must have been demolished after WWII when a lot of reconstruction had to be done.  It had certainly gone by the 1950s, as far as I can tell.

This final picture, obviously, is a much more recent postcard.  It shows the band of the Royal Marines playing beside the Deal Memorial Bandstand - too small to shelter them all - built just over ten years ago. 

Deal has had a long history of association with the Royal Marines.  The Barracks in the town date back to 1794 and later housed the Royal Marines School of Music.  In 1989 the IRA bombed the barracks killing 11 bandsmen.  It was decided that the best memorial to the bandsmen would be to build a new bandstand.  It was made possible by donations and it opened in May 1993.  Each year the Royal Marines band returns (they moved to Portsmouth in 1996) to play a concert to a huge crowd.

A post for Sepia Saturday.