The extreme winter conditions have had a toll on the roads and many buildings, however I was dismayed to discover that the Round Building in Parlington Park, classed as either a Deer Shelter, or Cattle Shelter according to the listing on English Heritage, had partly collapsed no doubt due to the movement caused by frost followed by thawing conditions. Hopefully it can be re-instated in the near future before it gets any worse. I have written about it previously, the design was by William Lindley, a Doncaster architect who trained under the famous Yorkshireman John Carr. Further information about the structure is on the Parlington History site here, about a third way down the page is a QuickTime VR 360° panorama taken inside the building late last year.
The temperature at 7:00 am today was around -5.0° and leaving the estate by car, the padlock securing the gates on the driveway was frozen, fortunately previous experience has taught me to have a warming device to hand, to free the mechanism. After a couple of minutes with my camping lighter, which is like a mini blowlamp, the lock mechanism freed up and I was able to open the gates and proceed beyond Narnia, which is how Parlington seems at this time of year, and over to Saxton. Passing by the Crooked Billet, on route, I noticed that the place looked decidedly undisturbed by visitors, perhaps it has closed down?
Although this may seem a little off topic, the proposed acquisition of Sun Systems by Oracle, will bring MySQL under the control of the world’s largest provider of closed source databases. MySQL is probably the leading open source database system on the market and is used by many sites around the world. For example this blog which is Wordpress based uses MySQL as do all Wordpress blogs, regardless of who hosts the site. Similarly my Parlington history site uses MySQL for certain aspects of its functioning. If MySQL is absorbed by Oracle and becomes a propriety format, the world will change, many, many blogs will be affected and the whole culture of the Internet will be damaged.
The intro photo was taken on Christmas day by my eldest daughter, Pip, she thought it worth capturing the moment! I have cooked the Christmas turkey on a Weber BBQ since the late 80’s. The BBQ in the image is the fifth I have owned, and with the ash collection system beneath the kettle, is, I can testify, the best yet! Behind and almost obscured is an earlier model, which had just completed cooking a duck to accompany the turkey.
When I was at school, I recall being taught physics and it is the lasting recollections of that time that have caused me to be confused about the science of climate change; the present daily dose of verbal abuse from our political apparatchiks and the endless stream of doom from the msm (main stream media), have left me wanting to know the truth about what is happening. I say this because I have lived through times of previous doom laden predictions, all of which failed to materialise to the extent predicted. But there is a difference this time, my understanding of basic physics is being undermined.
A recent win on eBay of the photo-postcard, shown above, dated 1904 has been added to the Parlington history site, and contrasts this former Gascoigne property with the location today. It was sold in 1964 in the major auction in October that year; details of the auction were added in an earlier post: the-biggest-sell-off-of-aberford-that-ever-was.
This may seem an odd post title, but during my visit to London last weekend, whilst on route to the V & A Museum in South Kensington, I noticed a sign in the tube network which gave dates of various luminaries from the past and their birth places. There was the name of Howard Carter [1874-1939] the Egyptologist, famous for discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun on the 26th of November 1922. His birthplace was stated as Swaffham, and having visited the place recently, I was unaware of this fact. [This link is to an earlier post about a visit to Swaffham] This reminded me of my own mini discovery a couple of years ago whilst cutting the grass, my foot slipped down a rabbit hole and I grated my ankle on a hard object which turned out to be the remains of a brick wall.
Over the last few years I have had many people ask me about producing panoramas of the various parts of the Parlington Estate, some to show on the Parlington history site other to offer for sale. I have decided to be more pro-active and take some of my photography to a new level and offer various items for sale. To this end I have invested in a Manfrotto Panoramic Head for producing multi row panoramas. These will be available on http://www.parlington.biz in the near future, generally in giclée print versions up to A2 size. I will also be adding some of my photos from other parts of the country in due course.
During a weekend trip to London, for me it was important to make a visit to Marble Arch, one of many, to view again this edifice built in 1828 to a design by John Nash to form an entrance to Buckingham Palace. It was moved in 1851 to its present location, nearby the location of the then removed Tyburn Gallows.
The stone, Portland Limestone, is clearly much more durable and impressive than the stone used on the Triumphal Arch at Parlington. But it is significant that this arch which was like Parlington, modelled on the Constantine Arch adjacent to the Coliseum or Colosseum in Rome. One advantage that the arch in Parlington has, is the opportunity to photograph it without any people!