Castle Aching

[TheQ]

7 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

 

My own ancestry is a mix of English, Scots, Irish and Welsh however the earliest ancestor of mine to arrive in Australia was on my father's side and was Scottish from the west of Scotland, and he came as an indentured labourer on his way to New Zealand in the late 1830s (he was in the same batch as an ancestor of Geoffrey Robertson). It was either that or lead a starvation existence harvesting kelp.

    

 

After the end of the Napoleonic wars,  the demand for kelp disappeared,  it was used for soap and glass making. But continental supplies of soda brought the price down from £10 to £2 per ton by 1820. Added to this the highlands were very over populated.  The population of say Tiree was over 5000 against today's 1750. All dependant on what they could grow on the small fertile areas, which was potatoes. 

The first potato failure of 1845 didn't just affect Ireland, the highlands were devastated. The combination of tenants being unable to pay their rents and lairds indebtedness led to the highland clearances. 

Contrary to popular belief,  a great many from the highlands weren't evicted,  but chose like your ancestor to leave for a better life.  Going as an endentured  servant meant the receiving agent in New Zealand paid for the trip.. He would not have been happy at your ancestors going walkabout... 

[Nearholmer]

I’m pretty sure that kelp was also burned to produce alkaline ash to make lye for soap-making.

 

probably not an industry, though, more a local-use thing all around the coast.

[Andy Hayter]

That is the comment above about continental soda reducing the price 5 fold.

[Compound2632]

At the Warley International Model Railway Exhibition today, a very nice Norfolk "might have been" in 7 mm scale, Norwich Central. Passenger lines to a terminus, with goods yard at lower level in front. Today seemed  to be Great Eastern on the passenger side and Midland & Great Northern on the goods - engines featuring were one of the ex-Cornish Minerals Railway 2-4-0s with 4-wheel tender but still with side tanks, one of the Marriot outside-cylinder 0-6-0Ts, and an Ivatt 0-6-0. The Great Eastern engines included a 2-4-0, a 0-6-0, and a 0-6-0T - I'm afraid I couldn't tell you which classes but they all looked very Great Eastern to me. I'm hoping roles will be reversed tomorrow because there were 4-4-0s of Classes  A and C frustratingly out of view on a table behind the layout!

[Edwardian]

So, this BBC War of the Words mullarky!  I've watched the first episode now and I've posted some observations in the Meeja section, but as we've discussed the matter Here, I thought I'd repeat what I've said as it's a Castle Aching topic strand.

 

No, I don't refer to the 1940s condition Collett Goods and modern gangwayed coaches.  I just ignore those bits. It's what the Beeb has done with the story that's got me thinking and posting. 

 

The BBC adaptation necessarily introduces a raft of new material to bulk out the sparse details we have of Wells's narrator.  Here I fee somewhat Prophetic, if I may say so. The Beeb has, indeed, provided a rich filling for the outline drafted by Wells, providing quite a lot of detailed specifics, probably more, in fact, than was necessary.  What have they introduced and why?

 

Interestingly, the BBC choose to be very specific about when it's set. 1905, we're told. As Castle Aching is set in 1905, I was immediately alert at this point! 

 

It is well known that Wells lived on Maybury Road, Woking.  His narrator refers to his house on Maybury Hill in the book. Maybury Hill runs at an angle from Maybury Road on the other side of the railway line, which passes over the road. 

 

The Maybury Road house was a semi-detached suburban villa named 'Lynton' and now numbered 141.  It faces, across the road, the railway line, and the train movements could clearly be heard from the house.  The line, of course, was the LSWR main line, "where all night long the goods trains shunted and bumped and clattered – without serious effect upon our healthy slumbers".

 

Wells moved to Maybury Road in 1895.  Famously he did so in order to shack up with Amy Robbins, which was a bold move considering that he was married to someone else, his cousin, at the time. The 'G' in H G Wells stood for George and the BBC makes our journalist "George" and pairs him with "Amy", reproducing Wells' own domestic situation.

 

Wells wrote many of his best known works there, including WotW (1898).

 

I believe this picture is of Wells and Amy, outside Lynton in 1895. 

 

 

The oldest map of Maybury on the National Library of Scotland site is a 1912 survey, though the previous survey had been 1894, published 1896, which would have been spot on.  The 1912 survey shows a continuous line of semis, I reckon that Wells's semi probably stood alone in 1895.

 

Why did the BBC choose 1905, not 1895?

 

If you are interpolating Wells's own story with WotW, which seems to me to be quite a neat idea on the part of the Beeb, why not set it at the time Wells was living in Woking and writing the story?  At most you might say that, if the Martians are, according to Wells, drawing their plans against us in the closing years of the Nineteenth Century, the logical time to set the story is the turn of the Century.This would fit in with the Wells narrative, giving events a "near future" setting, from the point the story was imagined.  The BBC narration moves this forward, saying the Martians are plotting against us in the early Twentieth Century, as if desperate for some reason to push the invasion itself forward to 1905.  Why?

 

I don't know.  That is not yet obvious to me.  Looking forward, however, it still places HMS Thunderchild in the pre-Dreadnought era, not that Wells made her a battleship (IIRC she was a "torpedo ram"). 

 

Well, for one thing, 1905 means that we are potentially dealing with specific real world events (the Russo-Japanese conflict gets some mention) and people.  

 

One specific event mentioned is an attack on an English fishing fleet by the Russian navy.  This matches the Dogger Bank incident.  Apparently the Russians thought our trawlers were Japanese naval vessels and fired.  Then they decided that their own ships were Japanese and they fired at each other.  These events took place in October 1904, however, so don't really help to explain the 1905 setting.  

 

We have scenes at the Admiralty.  Here we are introduced to a BBC character, a rather one-dimensional pompous and self-agrandising "Minister".  Well, given the date, we are under a Conservative & Unionist administration, led by PM Balfour. The Admiralty suggests the First Lord, in this case Frederick Campbell, Earl Cawdor (the nearest, so far, to a connection with a Collett Goods!), but I doubt it's him we're after and I doubt he'd be called "Minister". 

 

Anyway, the government of 1905 was unpopular.  The Conservative & Unionist party was split over the issue of Free Trade versus Tariff Reform (protectionism), with potential BBC Imperialist bogieman "Pushful Joe" Chamberlain resigning over the issue in order to campaign for TR.  The Conservatives were identified with the less than satisfactory outcome of the Boer War, and news had broken of the British "Concentration Camps". The Rowntree study of 1902 had shown a significant portion of the population under the poverty line, fuelling the impetus for social reform.  In short, the Government was getting caned as "the Nasty Party" and the Liberals (Free Traders to a man) were returned to power in a landslide general election victory in 1906.

 

So, it's this unpopular Tory government that ended with Balfour's resignation in November 1905 that the BBC is apparently choosing to reference here!  So I suppose that now we know that one of the key factors in the 1906 election defeat was the Balfour administration's poor handling of the Martian invasion!!!!!  

 

The other establishment figure (unkindly) portrayed is the Astronomer Royal.  Here, again, the BBC offers us a rather unsympathetic one-dimensional character. As we know we are specifically in 1905, this must be Sir William Henry Mahoney Christie, who evidently survived the events of Horsell Common (and the failure to spot the coming invasion), remaining in office until 1910, and on earth until 1922. 

 

What Christie might have done to attract the BBC's ire is uncertain, but he seems to be collateral damage in what, so far, appears to be a portrait of an Edwardian England in which the only tolerable males are socialist adulterers and gay astronomers (yes, it's hinted strongly that 'confirmed batchelor' Olgilvy is gay)! 

 

Personally, I have no problem with making changes, or even with these particular changes, and found the programme mildly entertaining and certainly not aggravating.  I will watch it again, if only to see where the 'new' parts of the story go. The somewhat transparent BBC wokeness does raise a wry smile, as you can tell from this post, largely because it is so transparent.  I don't mind it, however, just find it wryly amusing how obvious the BBC are being, not to mention making a Conservative government an unnecessary target in a period Sci-Fi drama screened during a general election campaign! What was it someone here said about every re-telling ultimately telling us more about the pre-occupations of the period of the re-telling than of the time at which the story was first told or set?! ?    

 

Some nice touches include the Astronomer Royal playing Elgar's Cockaigne Overture on a wind-up gramophone. The piece was premiered in 1901 and its theme is London, presenting "various aspects of turn-of-the-century London and Londoners" in the words of Wiki. This, then, is a pointer to the narrator's subsequent journey to London and the scenes there. 

 

Anyway, all good fun.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2019 by Edwardian

[St Enodoc]

55 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Elgar's Cockaigne Overture

A fine piece of music, perhaps more widely known nowadays for the fact that it was performed in 1971 at the Royal Festival Hall by the LSO under the baton of Prime Minister Edward Heath.

[Tom Burnham]

On 22/11/2019 at 10:20, TheQ said:

This was a standard thing when we had monasteries everywhere, often they had separate adjoining church "halls". The monks didn't want their minds polluted by viewing parishioners during services.. Many surviving churches that were part of a monastery have slightly odd layouts as the parishioners were allowed to choose which bit they wanted to keep... for a fee of course..

Our former local convent (now demolished) was originally established as a home for unmarried mothers.  The chapel was laid out with three separate naves converging on the altar, one each for the nuns, the Unfortunate Girls and the local RC parishioners.  The idea being that each group could see the priest celebrating the Mass, without being able to see or communicate with each other...

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

8 hours ago, TheQ said:

Going as an endentured  servant meant the receiving agent in New Zealand paid for the trip.. He would not have been happy at your ancestors going walkabout... 

 

That probably explains the tendency towards a somewhat, how shall I say, shiftlessness on the part of my grandfather on the paternal side.    

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

15 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Our former local convent (now demolished) was originally established as a home for unmarried mothers.  The chapel was laid out with three separate naves converging on the altar, one each for the nuns, the Unfortunate Girls and the local RC parishioners.  The idea being that each group could see the priest celebrating the Mass, without being able to see or communicate with each other...

 

That seems to have been a good idea as it might be said that the Unfortunate Girls had been previously indulging in a little more communication than was good for them..... 

[NeilHB]

As Compound has noted on the previous page, there is a lovely 7mm scale M&GN/GE model called Norwich Central on show at the Warley MRC Exhibition this weekend at the NEC. I spent quite a lot of time watching it yesterday whilst shirking my duties on the 7mmNGA stand - oops!

 

I snapped a few photos for our esteemed host that I thought fellow parishioners would also appreciate:

 

B class plus on hire Midland 0-4-4T carrying M&GN lettering 

 

Da class plus one of the ex Cornwall Minerals rebuilds

 

Recalling a discussion from some (!) pages back about local PO wagons I spotted those - some more useful ones for you James? 
 

The ex Cornwall rebuilds really are lovely looking locos.

 

A class enters the station. 
 

Rush hour in the goods yard with the addition of one of the delightful MR tank engines - sure there must be a bit of a time paradox here with the MR and Cornwall rebuild appearing together at the same time...

 

Shame it wasn’t a Norfolk Fish Oil and Guano Company example! 
 

It appears that green and cream/white coaches are now popping up everywhere. Spotted on the delightful Stodden Hundred Light Railway in 7mm scale.

 

Best get on - need to be on my jolly way again shortly for another day behind the 7mmNGA stand at the show - come and say hello if you are there  

[Edwardian]

12 minutes ago, NeilHB said:

As Compound has noted on the previous page, there is a lovely 7mm scale M&GN/GE model called Norwich Central on show at the Warley MRC Exhibition this weekend at the NEC. I spent quite a lot of time watching it yesterday whilst shirking my duties on the 7mmNGA stand - oops!

 

I snapped a few photos for our esteemed host that I thought fellow parishioners would also appreciate:

 

B class plus on hire Midland 0-4-4T carrying M&GN lettering 

 

Da class plus one of the ex Cornwall Minerals rebuilds

 

Recalling a discussion from some (!) pages back about local PO wagons I spotted those - some more useful ones for you James? 
 

The ex Cornwall rebuilds really are lovely looking locos.

 

A class enters the station. 
 

Rush hour in the goods yard with the addition of one of the delightful MR tank engines - sure there must be a bit of a time paradox here with the MR and Cornwall rebuild appearing together at the same time...

 

Shame it wasn’t a Norfolk Fish Oil and Guano Company example! 
 

It appears that green and cream/white coaches are now popping up everywhere. Spotted on the delightful Stodden Hundred Light Railway in 7mm scale.

 

Best get on - need to be on my jolly way again shortly for another day behind the 7mmNGA stand at the show - come and say hello if you are there  

 

A superb layout, and some great pictures, thank you, which I have greatly enjoyed,

 

I should love to see Norwich Central in the flesh.

 

It is, however, slightly dispiriting to see so many elements intended for CA successfully realised on other layouts; if and when I ever advance this project, they'll be nothing on it that seems fresh or original!!

 

This one's even got the bl00dy fish oil wagon, as you say!j

[Nearholmer]

Yours will have (has) its own unique appeal. Unless someone has a huge space, they are  never going to create a railway in the landscape in 0, for instance.

 

I haven’t seen the BBC WotW yet, but I think the programme may be crashing into the same division of opinion that arose around that Agatha Christie thing last Christmas, judging by what is being said. I do hope they haven’t set it in 1905 so as to allow G to meet certain really interesting people who were in London that summer who I already have booked for an appearance in O’Doolite ....... that would be blasted irritating!

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Yours will have (has) its own unique appeal. Unless someone has a huge space, they are  never going to create a railway in the landscape in 0, for instance.

 

I haven’t seen the BBC WotW yet, but I think the programme may be crashing into the same division of opinion that arose around that Agatha Christie thing last Christmas, judging by what is being said. I do hope they haven’t set it in 1905 so as to allow G to meet certain really interesting people who were in London that summer who I already have booked for an appearance in O’Doolite ....... that would be blasted irritating!

 

Thanks, Kevin

 

I am open to alterations and additions, and this yarn has gaps for them. The concept of interpolating Wells's own life in Woking with that of his fictional narrator is quite a good one in my view. I'm not sure it's working, though, mainly, I feel because it's done in such a clunky way.  There are too many wrong notes in the script.

 

I ended up feeling much the same way about that war thing the Beeb just did. Great idea but it just descended into another clunky BBC attempt to shovel its present values into an historical setting. The series ended by pretty much turning an RAF station into a creche.  It became absurd.  

 

Hopefully. when I get to it, I'll find they haven't mucked up the Pullman thing too badly.

[Nearholmer]

Big question is how they will handle the long thought-piece at the end, where the author muses about human society and our place in the universe. That’s where I think they could use one of the interesting people, to have a dialogue with either Amy or G ..... There was a woman present who would be the ideal vehicle for a dialogue with Amy.

[Northroader]

And with respect to the the Norwich City Line, they do seem a bit light on buildings which can’t be said about CA.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Big question is how they will handle the long thought-piece at the end, where the author muses about human society and our place in the universe. That’s where I think they could use one of the interesting people, to have a dialogue with either Amy or G ..... There was a woman present who would be the ideal vehicle for a dialogue with Amy.

 

You are being very cryptic.  But I have patience.

 

Given the Pantomime Villain quality of many of the new characters, I do not expect anything too profound. Given the apparent clunkiness of the script, one might assume it's all the fault of some of Ed Reardon's high-flying Twelve Year Olds, but in fact the credit seems to have gone to the mature talent of Peter Harness.  So far I'm unconvinced that he has understood Wells or Edwardian England any more than Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens understood Tolkien and Middle Earth.  We shall see.

 

27 minutes ago, Northroader said:

And with respect to the the Norwich City Line, they do seem a bit light on buildings which can’t be said about CA.

 

There is some legitimate overlap here, as I, too, have conceived of a third station in Norwich, as readers will recall.  Earlier this year I expanded the WNR to connect with the GER at Stoke Ferry, run down through the Thetford Forest to reach Suffolk, at Bury Mildenhall Road, and to strike across to Norwich West station. So, an approach to modelling another Norwich station does have some interest for me.

[Guy Rixon]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

A superb layout, and some great pictures, thank you, which I have greatly enjoyed,

 

I should love to see Norwich Central in the flesh.

 

It is, however, slightly dispiriting to see so many elements intended for CA successfully realised on other layouts; if and when I ever advance this project, they'll be nothing on it that seems fresh or original!!

 

This one's even got the bl00dy fish oil wagon, as you say!j

Sympathy. I find myself in the same position w.r.t Blackfriars Bridge (also a superb layout). We shall just have to push our remaining USPs.

[Skinnylinny]

3 hours ago, NeilHB said:

The ex Cornwall rebuilds really are lovely looking locos.

They really are... I surely can't be the only one whose first thought was "That looks like a close approximation could be bashed out of the currently-ubiquitous Electrotren 0-6-0"?

[Edwardian]

7 minutes ago, Skinnylinny said:

They really are... I surely can't be the only one whose first thought was "That looks like a close approximation could be bashed out of the currently-ubiquitous Electrotren 0-6-0"?

 

No, you're not.  So far as I am aware, I am; that's been my Stated Intention for years!

 

Why do you think I'm forever banging on about them?!?

 

Again, some other b*gger'll do it before me!

 

Too much musing, too little modelling, that's my whole problem!

 

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2019 by Edwardian
spelling!

[RedGemAlchemist]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Big question is how they will handle the long thought-piece at the end, where the author muses about human society and our place in the universe. That’s where I think they could use one of the interesting people, to have a dialogue with either Amy or G ..... There was a woman present who would be the ideal vehicle for a dialogue with Amy.

I'll stick with the book, thanks. Still one of my favourites even now 16 years after I first read it. 

 

38 minutes ago, Skinnylinny said:

They really are... I surely can't be the only one whose first thought was "That looks like a close approximation could be bashed out of the currently-ubiquitous Electrotren 0-6-0"?

Glad to see I'm not the only one. 

[Skinnylinny]

35 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

No, you're not.  So far as I am aware, I am; that's been my Stated Intention for years!

 

Why do you think I'm forever banging on about them?!?

 

Again, some other b*gger'll do it before me!

 

Too much musing, too little modelling, that's my whole problem!

 

 

 

 

In my defence, that's nearly 800 pages ago! 

[Regularity]

37 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Again, some other b*gger'll do it before me!

 

Too much musing, too little modelling, that's my whole problem!

It’s no use having original thoughts, if thoughts are all they are.

I know this very well!

[TurboSnail]

1 hour ago, Skinnylinny said:

They really are... I surely can't be the only one whose first thought was "That looks like a close approximation could be bashed out of the currently-ubiquitous Electrotren 0-6-0"?

 

Well, I had a go at a bash, not trying to specifically model the CMR locos.

 

 

And I ain't sayin' nuffink, but if you look closely at this pic from a certain bodykit manufacturer, you may recognise a thing or two...

 

[wagonman]

Talking about illicit liaisons, I wonder if HGW ever frequented the Pizza Express in Woking...

[Annie]

Oh do Martians often call in there to grab a snack on the way to Alpha Centauri.