Castle Aching

[runs as required]

Thank you for that. Strangely that was my first instinctive caic.

i tried completing the original unedited post while roofers were at work upstairs fixing the 1709 Baroque leaking lead parapet gutters caught out by an unforcasted downpour. All the buckets were out!

The old maxim about parapet gutters (a C18 aesthetic conceit) is that they are easy to fix when they leak.

dh

[Compound2632]

20 minutes ago, runs as required said:

1709 Baroque leaking lead parapet gutters

 

Too many adjectives there - altogether baroque; I'm struggling to parse. I'm concerned if you have lead leaking through and 1709 seems like a large number requiring much maintenance. 

[wagonman]

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Too many adjectives there - altogether baroque; I'm struggling to parse. I'm concerned if you have lead leaking through and 1709 seems like a large number requiring much maintenance. 

 

Yes but...  being the proud/harassed possessor of a parapet gutter I do sympathise. Ours is comparatively new (c1800 CE) but still causes problems during the rainy season

Edited November 8, 2019 by wagonman

[Edwardian]

Sometime ago - and I don't recall whether it was here or on the Virtual Railways topic - our dearly beloved Annie posted a picture of Stanhope Forbes's 1927 painting Through the Marshes.

 

I piped up saying that I rather thought I'd seen it in the flesh at the NRM. 

 

Well, I was in York for a meeting yesterday, hence my neglect of the parish, and, lo, there it was, in a somewhat baroque and not especially appropriate frame.  

 

[Donw]

Lovely picture, agreed the frame does it no favours. No mention of where it might be. It makes me think of the line from Yarmouth to Freshwater on the IOW  which is now a cycle/walking path There are stretches where there is the Yar on one side and water filled marsh on the other. The IOW also offers the strange experience of the mournful toot of a tube train as it crosses the Brading Marshes or the pleasure of spotting Water Voles in the Eastern Yar while walking the old Newport Sandown line also a cycle path.

 

Don 

[Edwardian]

Not so quiet flows the Don ...

 

Very sadly, there seems to have been at least one fatality, and I pray that there will be no more.

 

On R4 just now, one Sheffield householder, rather splendidly, referred to the water that nearly flooded her house as "puthering out"

 

'Puthering', what a great dialect word.

 

My thoughts are with those affected by the flooding.  

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

Lovely picture, agreed the frame does it no favours. No mention of where it might be. It makes me think of the line from Yarmouth to Freshwater on the IOW  which is now a cycle/walking path There are stretches where there is the Yar on one side and water filled marsh on the other. The IOW also offers the strange experience of the mournful toot of a tube train as it crosses the Brading Marshes or the pleasure of spotting Water Voles in the Eastern Yar while walking the old Newport Sandown line also a cycle path.

 

Don 

 

Lorna Frost, Assistant Curator, Image Collections, at the NRM has said that "The painting depicts the line through the Marazion Marshes, not far from Penzance on the GWR main line".

 

She also describes the platelayers as "navvies", however, so yer pays yer money and makes yer choice.  However, as I believe Stanhope Forbes was of the famous Newlyn School, a nearby Cornish location is not improbable. I do not know the locale, however, so cannot comment upon the topography,

 

My knowledge of the GW lines in Cornwall is far sketchier than is the case with Devon (boyhood family holidays were regularly in the South Hams and only once in Cornwall), but I think the line west from St Erth to Marizion was the only stretch that hadn't been doubled by the Twenties, it does, indeed, traverse the marshes at this point. 

 

Are we looking at a rather dirty GW train?

[Hroth]

48 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Lorna Frost, Assistant Curator, Image Collections, at the NRM has said that "The painting depicts the line through the Marazion Marshes, not far from Penzance on the GWR main line".

 

Odd that she doesn't mention the squadron of Flying Saucers clearly investigating the technological state of the area....

 

OTOH someone must have liked the frame!

 

Talking about the train, what sort of carriages is it formed of?  Something "modern", or perhaps more Ratio/Hattonsesque? If its a mucky looking article, the panelling and livery application might be obscured enough not to matter. 

[Hroth]

On another matter entirely, I had a rather fitful dream early this morning, in which, for an unfathomable reason, I was somewhere where I met several members of the Parish Council...

 

Worrying..... 

[Northroader]

When Annie posted that painting it threw me totally, because of the single line. I hadn’t realised at that time it was still single on the last stretch. The signal is the Marazion up starter, and you’re standing on the overbridge at Marazion looking east. Normally you don’t take account of the marsh, because you’re looking off south (to the right) at the curve of the bay coming into view with St. Michaels mount in the middle.

[Compound2632]

I think I mentioned on Annie's virtual railway thread that Stanhope Forbes was a nephew of James Staats Forbes, Chairman of the LCDR and the Metropolitan District, nemesis of Sir Edward Watkin (SER & Met, amongst others), and art collector on a grand scale. Stanhope Forbes' elder brother William was General Manager and electrifier of the LBSCR. Their father had been General Manager of the MGWR. So I think we can safely presume that when it came to railway subjects, he knew what he was looking at.

[webbcompound]

37 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The signal is the Marazion up starter, and you’re standing on the overbridge at Marazion looking east. Normally you don’t take account of the marsh, because you’re looking off south (to the right) at the curve of the bay coming into view with St. Michaels mount in the middle.

And here we are on the bridge outside the now non extant Marazion station looking across the RSPB Marazion Marsh nature reserve, courtesy of Googles all seeing spies.

[Edwardian]

48 minutes ago, Hroth said:

On another matter entirely, I had a rather fitful dream early this morning, in which, for an unfathomable reason, I was somewhere where I met several members of the Parish Council...

 

Worrying..... 

 

For you or for us?

 

48 minutes ago, Northroader said:

When Annie posted that painting it threw me totally, because of the single line. I hadn’t realised at that time it was still single on the last stretch. The signal is the Marazion up starter, and you’re standing on the overbridge at Marazion looking east. Normally you don’t take account of the marsh, because you’re looking off south (to the right) at the curve of the bay coming into view with St. Michaels mount in the middle.

 

That makes perfect sense, and explains the elevated viewpoint. I had wondered if that was the station starter given how close to the station the marsh starts. 

 

[Northroader]

Its interesting, how they used to build submarines from specially designated wood apart from the men of war?

I just had to look that up, and sure enough...

Edited November 8, 2019 by Northroader

[Hroth]

2 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Its interesting, how they used to build submarines from specially designated wood apart from the men of war?

 

It says "site of".  I imagine a thicket of bulbous trunks, carefully felled and used to carve the hulls of "Holland" type submarines.  It tends to explain the size and limited freeboard of the vessels and why not many of the class were constructed.

 

I think that most of the published "information" is a blind to put the Imperial Navy off the track and the true construction is probably also the source of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partingon Plans", which is also notable for the inclusion of the Metropolitan Railway in the plot...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland-class_submarine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Bruce-Partington_Plans

 

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

Did you know the first sinking of a ship by a submarine was during the American Civil War? 

Bit early for CA, I know, just thought you'd find that interesting.

Edited November 8, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[Northroader]

Other people were involved too.....

[RedGemAlchemist]

1 minute ago, Northroader said:

Other people were involved too.....

And if we ever needed proof that the nature of the universe is cyclical, this thread is it.

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

And if we ever needed proof that the nature of the universe is cyclical, this thread is it.

But so enjoyable!

 

4 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Did you know the first sinking of a ship by a submarine was during the American Civil War? 

Bit early for CA, I know, just thought you'd find that interesting.

 

Sank three times, killing all the crew each time.

The third time, when it sank the USS Housatonic, the Confederate Navy gave up and didn't try to retrieve it!

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Sank three times, killing all the crew each time.

The third time, when it sank the USS Housatonic, the Confederate Navy gave up and didn't try to retrieve it!

Indeed. The H. L. Hunley.

 

5 minutes ago, Hroth said:

But so enjoyable!

Indubitably!

[Annie]

47 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

For you or for us?

 

 

That makes perfect sense, and explains the elevated viewpoint. I had wondered if that was the station starter given how close to the station the marsh starts. 

 

It's an area of Cornwall that I have done no research on at all, but I must admit it would make a fine basis for a layout with that lovely causeway across the marsh.  After languishing derelict for far too long the station building is now in private hands and is being converted into a dwelling. 

[Donw]

I hadn't recognised the painting either we have watched bird on those marshes but these days they are more overgrown with less open water than the painting if my memory is right. I too was surprised the section was still single in 1927 I seem to remember the line through  Hayle was doubled much earlier ( there were references on the Map in the volume of Great Western Stations IIRC)

 

Don

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Its interesting, how they used to build submarines from specially designated wood apart from the men of war?

I just had to look that up, and sure enough...

 

In case you assumed this was a joke, it was real albeit unsuccessful 

[Northroader]

 

 

To explain:

https://lookup.london/londons-weirdest-sculpture/

Edited November 8, 2019 by Northroader

[Nearholmer]

On submarines: the military got into internal combustion powered narrow gauge railway locos at exactly the time that submarines were being developed, and while field railways were definitely something of interest at the time, no attempt was made to deploy the technology in that area until quite a bit later. I’ve long thought that what they were really interested in was building-up experience of i.c. for other applications, such as fast patrol boats and submarines.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Nearholmer