Castle Aching

[runs as required]

Fascinating.  As you can see from the superimposed sketch below, CA's Drill Hall is much smaller in comparison.

The demolition of the Chapel Field Road Drill Hall in Norwich must rank in its heinousness with that of the Octagon in Wisbech. I hope that the town councillors and planners responsible are spending eternity in one of the nether circles of Hell, doomed to travel endlessly round a giant roundabout from which there is no escape, while a large rectangular modernist erection is repeatedly and inappropriately inserted into their urban fabric.

Either that, or send them to Milton Keynes, which is probably much the same thing ... 

I think I'd prefer them to suffer in Hell, if only because it is possible to escape Milton Keynes, eventually. I know this because I've been there, yet lived to tell the tale.   I hope that, occasionally, John Betjeman is released from Heaven to make pastoral visits to the Other Place to taunt modernist planners, pompous aldermen and back-handing builders, with news of how we treasure St Pancras Station, and how they are all still hated for the Euston Arch.  As he leaves, perhaps he could drop some unfriendly bombs upon them.  

My toes are already warming up

I am proud to have been one of the inventors of MK's kilometre grid. We were a small group of Masters degree planners of 'Civic Design' from different disciplines and countries who devised it as a best fit to what, in the 'White Heat of Technology' of 1963, seemed to be a "Neighbourhood" congruence of needs: where one could walk to school, to the local GP, to the shops and GPO., and cycle to work and leisure activities.

We advocated it as a module that could multiply as a loose grid across a site for settlement enabling  separated pedestrian and cycle-ways from vehicular traffic.The Kilo grid could support a range of different types of residential tenures and mixed use activities.

 

The Kilo grid got used for the last two New Towns built in Britain - at Washington, County Durham (on former colliery sites) and at Milton Keynes.  Its flexibility did seem to be proving popular with residents. At Washington, now subsumed by Sunderland, the housing variety gets described by estate agents as 'sought after'..

The Kilo grid square died in this country with the abandonment from 1979 of such urbanisation to the market and to national firms of builder developers. We appear to have opted for the repeating US 'strip' nowadays, but the Kilo grid matrix still gets widely utilised in the EU.

 

2

So as punishment I propose CA should 'take a lend' of a striking Norfolk building by Lutyens as the Drill Hall.

dh

[Edwardian]

It seems I must apologise.  Milton Keynes, on my one visit, did not resemble the intended Nirvana described by Runs As Required, or, indeed, the contented home another has described to me.

 

I failed entirely to penetrate its inner regions, and was doomed, instead, to travel an apparent eternity around a forested grid admitting of no landmarks by which I might take my bearings. Eventually I was forced to abandon the quest for my destination in order to devote the few remaining hours of daylight to attempts to escape the town.  I swear that I kept returning, again and again, to the same intersection.  Like some malignant forest in Middle Earth, it was as if the roads kept changing course, always to lead me back to where I had started.  It was the Blair Witch Project, with roundabouts.

 

So, forgive me if my general suspicion of planned Utopias combined with the frustrating and protracted misery of my only attempt to visit the town led me to an unfair and unwarranted judgment against it.

 

I am grateful to learn the etymology of "unthank".  That it is associated in some degree with Norfolk is clear from the aforementioned road name, and it is used as the name of the House Keeper, IIRC, in E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation. I have tended to associate it with the North East, due not only to the eponymous sisters, but also to the splendid Unthank Hall, hard by the Weardale Railway (sadly in the hands of diesel enthusiasts).  Surely a subject to be modelled?

Edited September 25, 2018 by Edwardian

[ian]

Redditch also had an interesting approach to roads. The rest of the world was included under 'Other districts' on many of the signs.

[Guy Rixon]

You're all assuming that Milton Keynes actually exists. I think it's a myth, possibly a story made up to scare small children. In my expeditions to the area (and I have colleagues at the OU, so I've seen more of it than some), I find no evidence of the lost city of Milton Keynes.

[Hroth]

You're all assuming that Milton Keynes actually exists. I think it's a myth, possibly a story made up to scare small children. In my expeditions to the area (and I have colleagues at the OU, so I've seen more of it than some), I find no evidence of the lost city of Milton Keynes.

All I know of Milton Keynes is that it was so completely designed that they even thought of concrete cows..... 

 

We passed through the district on the Grand Union canal one year, and for some reason wished to visit Milton Keynes (food shopping, perhaps?).  Was there any access from the canal? Once we scrambled up a cutting side at a bridge could we see anything?  No.

 

So we carried on to the onomatopoeic Bletchley.  A place that was so dull and dirty that it almosr surpassed March as a place not to visit more than once.

 

 

 

Redditch also had an interesting approach to roads. The rest of the world was included under 'Other districts' on many of the signs.

 

A variant of this that I have seen in other places is the designation "All Other Destinations".  We now use this phrase to describe perambulating a roundabout more than once when the required exit has been missed...

[Hroth]

It seems I must apologise.  Milton Keynes, on my one visit, did not resemble the intended Nirvana described by Runs As Required, or, indeed, the contented home another has described to me.

 

I failed entirely to penetrate its inner regions, and was doomed, instead, to travel an apparent eternity around a forested grid admitting of no landmarks by which I might take my bearings. Eventually I was forced to abandon the quest for my destination in order to devote the few remaining hours of daylight to attempts to escape the town.  I swear that I kept returning, again and again, to the same intersection.  Like some malignant forest in Middle Earth, it was as if the roads kept changing course, always to lead me back to where I had started.  It was the Blair Witch Project, with roundabouts.

 

So, forgive me if my general suspicion of planned Utopias combined with the frustrating and protracted misery of my only attempt to visit the town led me to an unfair and unwarranted judgment against it.

 

I am grateful to learn the etymology of "unthank".  That it is associated in some degree with Norfolk is clear from the aforementioned road name, and it is used as the name of the House Keeper, IIRC, in E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation. I have tended to associate it with the North East, due not only to the eponymous sisters, but also to the splendid Unthank Hall, hard by the Weardale Railway (sadly in the hands of diesel enthusiasts).  Surely a subject to be modelled?

 Diesel enthusiasts have to go somewhere....

 

At least you know where they ARE!

[St Enodoc]

A variant of this that I have seen in other places is the designation "All Other Destinations".  We now use this phrase to describe perambulating a roundabout more than once when the required exit has been missed...

Many years ago, when we were on holiday in Cornwall, we were stopped by a traffic survey as we were entering Newquay. The surveyor asked Dad where we had come from, so naturally he replied "London", which was where we lived.

 

A little while later, having got lost and missed a couple of turnings, we found ourselves entering Newquay again by the same road. Same survey, different surveyor, same question. This time Dad replied "Here!" and drove off, leaving a very perplexed surveyor behind.

[Talltim]

There’s an Unthank near me in Derbyshire too
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2846533,-1.5364709,3a,60y,219.68h,72.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skipFGwlHx1GuriOzrd1rag!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Edited to correct wierd link

Edited September 25, 2018 by Talltim

[TheQ]

I found MK no problem at all, having lived there 1975-1976 and 1988 to 1999.  Each individual village in a square preserving the old villages  if they were in that square. It's just a case of driving down to the square and finding an entrance in..There is normally one entrance each side.

 

In Norfolk  however we have a council that removed many sign posts to villages and replaced with informative signs saying "byway", helpfull that. Also near me they removed the name of one village entirely from the road sign pointing to the tarmaced road and put one up on a dirt track, the only other access...

 

Mind you  this has had one advantage, there is an admittedly single track  road I use quite often, they decided to reclassify as a green lane, which puts the Emmets off. it's actually tarmaced the whole way...

 

When all this happened the NCC roads department claimed they had sent someone to every road to look at it before reclassifying...

[Donw]

Milton Keynes shares with Telford new town a love of roundabouts. The result achieves for some the the effect of a labryinth to rival that in Crete. We did once find a nice spot to park and eat lunch (we were passing through in our motorhome) but I doubt we would ever find it again. In Telford during the 80s when estates were being built there were large areas where only the roads existed punctuated by roundabouts. Working on the telephones we were often parked on the roadsides and would be plauged by the poor lost souls trying to find a location or their way out. Given instructions such as 2nd at the next roundabout then 1st, 3rd, 1st at subsequent ones you could see their eyes glaze over at the impossiblity of following such instructions.

Mind you I have been back to Telford and found many of the old routes I used to know using roads that were their before the new town seem to have been swept  away and replaced by more roundabouts.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

Don't mind me; I'm just on the downward spiral. It's a cycle: Stress and anxiety, then unreasoning rage, during which I rail against random targets (it could be, say, the inanely pointless renaming of our national railway museum one day, 1960s town planning the next - anything that strays in front of my cross-hairs), then apathy and depression, leading to complete collapse, moral and physical atrophy.  Then, as the song goes, I pick myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again. 

 

This permits a brief phase during each cycle when I am actually a decent human being, wear pastel knit-wear and gambol with puppies in fields of buttercups  ...

 

 

[phil_sutters]

All I know of Milton Keynes is that it was so completely designed that they even thought of concrete cows..... 

 

We passed through the district on the Grand Union canal one year, and for some reason wished to visit Milton Keynes (food shopping, perhaps?).  Was there any access from the canal? Once we scrambled up a cutting side at a bridge could we see anything?  No.

 

So we carried on to the onomatopoeic Bletchley.  A place that was so dull and dirty that it almosr surpassed March as a place not to visit more than once.

 

 

 

 

A variant of this that I have seen in other places is the designation "All Other Destinations".  We now use this phrase to describe perambulating a roundabout more than once when the required exit has been missed...

This sign always puzzled me. I calculated that, as the named places were churches or similar buildings, it was because someone was trying to be religiously 'inclusive'. 

 

On the subject of inclusivity, I recently took Channel 4 to task over their big metal figure (called by them their 'ident') walking ashore and landing a large group of people onto a white cliff top, where they then turn and, standing on the edge, wave out to sea. The past year has seen all the local authorities in our area of the Sussex coast back up the RNLI and Coastguard campaign to warn of the serious danger of rock falls from the chalk cliffs, begging people not to go near the edge. There has been at least one death from selfie-taking, quite apart from the huge toll of suicides, and there have been numerous rock falls at all times of the year, not just in rough weather. Channel 4 response was that their ident was delivering a very inclusive group of people to the location. My comment was that the length of time the ident was on the screen, in slots between programmes and adverts., would be too short for viewers to notice who was in the group, but that the image of them standing on the cliff waving would be far more likely to stick in the memory.

Mind you the BBC was as bad with their use of the white cliffs for their 2012 Olympics publicity, where they had Olympic and then Paralympic heroes standing on the cliff top waving.

[Hroth]

Don't mind me; I'm just on the downward spiral. It's a cycle: Stress and anxiety, then unreasoning rage, during which I rail against random targets (it could be, say, the inanely pointless renaming of our national railway museum one day, 1960s town planning the next - anything that strays in front of my cross-hairs), then apathy and depression, leading to complete collapse, moral and physical atrophy.  Then, as the song goes, I pick myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again. 

 

This permits a brief phase during each cycle when I am actually a decent human being, wear pastel knit-wear and gambol with puppies in fields of buttercups  ...

Puppies are ok, provided someone else is looking after and house-training them!

 

Fingers crossed that the spirals become more shallow as times go by, until then keep venting and get it all off your chest.

[Andy Kirkham]

According to the Oxford Directory of English Place Names, the place and hence the surname derives from a pre 7th century Olde English word "unpance" which means literally "without leave," and described an area of land which was occupied unlawfully.

 

There are three villages in Northumberland and also it's the surname of the sisters who perform folk music and dance.

 

Alasdair Gray used the name Unthank for the Glasgow-like place of purgatory in his epic novel Lanark.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jun/30/fiction.alasdairgray

[wagonman]

I always enjoy Reggie Unthanks's blog on Norwich history...  https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/09/15/norwich-city-of-trees/

[corneliuslundie]

I seem to remember that there is also a magic roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, though not as grand as that in Swindon. One exit used to pass under the now demolished Kodak building.

It is not only towns/cities like Swindon and MK which have given me problems. After a model railway exhibition somewhere in East Anglia (I think it may have been Bury St Edmunds but it was a long time ago) we were returning to Hatfield but found that the signposted route out of the town we had taken then took us back in by another road. And Godmanchester has, or had, a one-way ring road, so the bus which called there en route from somewhere to somewhere else ended up circumnavigating the town about 1.5 times. The canal was quicker!

What you need is a really useful direction sign: "Hatfield and the North", as found on the A1.

Presumably CA can be mercifully free of direction signs, just a few appropriate period enamel advertisements.

Jonathan

[Hroth]

Perhaps in anticipation of the forthcoming motor age, "Please drive slowly through the village"....

[Martin S-C]

Thank you for the mention of Unthank Hall, I was pretty sure I'd heard of it. It would be my favourite address if I could choose one... though there is a farm in SW Leicestershire which, by way of the importance of its location has an address "junction of The Fosse Way and Watling Street" which I think is a splendid address to have.

[Edwardian]

I seem to remember that there is also a magic roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, though not as grand as that in Swindon. One exit used to pass under the now demolished Kodak building.

It is not only towns/cities like Swindon and MK which have given me problems. After a model railway exhibition somewhere in East Anglia (I think it may have been Bury St Edmunds but it was a long time ago) we were returning to Hatfield but found that the signposted route out of the town we had taken then took us back in by another road. And Godmanchester has, or had, a one-way ring road, so the bus which called there en route from somewhere to somewhere else ended up circumnavigating the town about 1.5 times. The canal was quicker!

What you need is a really useful direction sign: "Hatfield and the North", as found on the A1.

Presumably CA can be mercifully free of direction signs, just a few appropriate period enamel advertisements.

Jonathan

 

Perhaps in anticipation of the forthcoming motor age, "Please drive slowly through the village"....

 

Castle Aching Welcomes Careful Drovers?

[Martin S-C]

"Please ensure your herd defecates with due consideration to residents"

 

EDIT: Which reminds me, seen in south Wales many years ago:

Edited September 25, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Edwardian]

Meanwhile, back in Norfolk ...

[Hroth]

adding "me dearie" for West Country villages?

 

Apropos of very little, as might have been exclaimed by the serving maid in a Victorian melodrama;

 

"I'll unthank you to remove your hands from my person, young Master!"  

[Edwardian]

Need a morale boost, so ....

[Hroth]

Morale duely boosted......

 

( see the ferns at the left-hand edge of the picture - it must be Art!)

[Martin S-C]

I was driving on the Dingle peninsular in SW Ireland several years ago and the road was narrow and winding, diving down into small valleys with tight turns at the head of each over small stone bridges. We came around one bend to see "SLOW" painted on the road. The curve tightened and we next saw "VERY SLOW" in front of us. Finally the road dog-legged the other way steeply downhill to the bridge and we were greeted with the delightful advice "EVEN SLOWER". I have regretted ever since not taking photos but maybe these instructions can be seen in Google Earth.