wagonman

Put it down to muscle wastage in old age...

Sorry Stephen, that's one of the (many) numbers I don't have.

I don't have too much sympathy with farmers, the vast majority of whom voted for Brexit and Johnson and who are thus hoist on their own petard. On the second point, I'm wearing a pair of M&S 'slim fit' jeans which are indeed a good fit, and so cheap I try hard not to think how or where they were made. Gone are the days when M&S only used British sweat shops...

I've always thought of Geoffrey Cox as an expensive lawyer who occasionally moonlights as an MP.

Not at all, but we do need to have a context for figures. Perhaps the most important figure is that the 50,000 represents a bit over 10% of all deaths in the UK, one of the highest rates in the world. Compare with the 0.6% figure for Australia quoted by Monkeysarefun. Perhaps we should just stick to 'Excess Deaths'? Perhaps too we should strive to get rid of this murderously inept and corrupt government? Just a thought.

The 50,000 deaths a year from COVID is not an inconsiderable figure, but to put it into context there are around three times as many deaths from cancer. Or, to put it another way, about 10% of the total deaths in the country (in 2020).

An interesting and useful analysis. One of these days I must try and work out the average mileage of a typical coal merchant's wagon...

Best I could find was an 1881 Kelly's which does indeed list Robinson as a coal merchant – or rather as two: Henry Robinson & Son, coal & stone merchants of 94 High Street and 46 Newmarket Street, and William Robinson, coal merchant of Cross Street and the railway station. No doubt Ancestry could show what if any relationship there was. Kellys also had Thomas Thornton, coal merchant of Keighley Road. There is an on-line source of old directories at http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital run by Leicester University. Skipton in those days was in the West Riding of course.

He spelt my name correctly …. *smug emoji*. Thanks Jerry.

The first tenants in the new tower blocks loved their homes; the down side was the concomitant destruction of the old communities during the slum clearance process. Then came the lack of on-going care and maintenance for the new tower blocks and pretty soon they became the new slums – with added isolation when the lifts weren't working. Then came Ronan Point...

Undoubtedly true – but which Christmas?

I actually had a ride behind Bellerophon on the Foxfield Railway a few years ago as a diversion from working at the Stafford Records Office. Not often that I can combine an archive visit with a preserved railway visit (I have a very tolerant wife).

They do usually leave the driver behind...

It's my understanding that in BG days the branch locos were turned between journeys as they used 4-4-0STs which may not have been all that stable running bunker first.

Ah yes, the wonderful Burnham Mill.

At 1262 pages that is a big ask! We're heading for War and Peace territory...

Yes. Wrong side of the Ouse!

Bear in mind these figures are for the whole of Norfolk. NW Norfolk is very different to South Norfolk (Breckland – main export rabbits) or indeed East Norfolk (heavier soils, smaller, predominantly mixed farms). NW Norfolk is large estates, arable, 'High Farming' as Arthur Young called it. More recently Susannah Wade-Martins has done a lot of work on this, ad of course Christine Hiskey has written the definitive history of the Holkham Estate. My village was littered with small orchards – we still have a fig tree and an espaliered pear tree in our garden, but I presume it was mostly/all for local consumption. Holt station had a granary owned by Page & Turner of Blakeney, presumably built when they stopped using their ships and transferred their trade to the railway at the end of the C19th. I managed to grab a quick photo of it just before it was demolished – unfortunately the non-railway side. There was a central lucam on the other frontage.

I would discount fish/milk traffic. This part of Norfolk is mostly arable with no dairy to speak of. Any fish is probably carted from the coast. Circus trains are even rarer! Grain traffic might be worth thinking about though...

If you look at the figures at a district rather than county level, North Norfolk has usually been in the bottom (ie lowest) half dozen or so in terms of infection rate despite the influx of tourists. In part this must be due to an elderly and risk averse demographic.

I saw a meme on Twitter recently – no really – where Bill Gates was congratulating himself on having decided to hide his microchips in Ivermectin instead of the vaccine...

Which is presumably why the pigs were put in crates – to make it less interesting.

I believe the unfortunate porkers that made the final journey to Calne did so in cattle trucks. That they might catch a chill was probably of little concern given they were soon to catch something far worse.. Apropos the rather more cherished beasts that got to travel in crates, I have been unable to discover if there was such a thing as a Standard GWR Pig Crate, though I suspect there was

Early, would be, antecedents of the Tamworth Two perhaps?

I recently did an analysis of the traffic arising from the 1925 Wilts Agricultural Show at Warminster and there were a few instances of pigs being transported. In all cases the animals were in crates loaded onto cattle wagons, in many cases in the company of cattle – as the prize animals were usually carried in 'Beetles', these presumably were the runners up.