Month: November 2021

Discoveries

West Kennet Long Barrow

West Kennet Long Barrow (WKLB), near the Avebury stone circles in Wiltshire, is one of 180 barrows in southern England. At 328ft. […]

West Kennet Long Barrow (WKLB), near the Avebury stone circles in Wiltshire, is one of 180 barrows in southern England. At 328ft. it is the second longest after its neighbour, East Kennet Long Barrow. However, WKLB has been more extensively excavated and much has been written and debated about the functions of its five chambers, which may have included shamanic rituals, rites of passage, childbirth, cremations and acoustic effects.

Early sketches of this 5,000-year-old mound show boulders set all around its perimeter and especially at its eastern entrance, which appears to have been deliberately filled in and blocked at around 2000BC. Local farmers purloined some of these stones but in 1859, when Dr. John Thurnam (1810-73) attempted the first excavation, the farmer in whose field WKLB stood forbade him from removing anything but skeletons. Thurnam found one chamber but could not proceed any further.

In 1955-56 Professor Stuart Piggott (1910-96) did have permission to conduct a proper excavation. He and his team discovered four more rooms and a central passageway, with many bones, skulls and pieces of pottery. The mound was originally covered in gleaming white chalk and must have been a spiritual and ancestral icon for a once-nomadic clan that settled in the area.

*Image: Jeremy Bolwell at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0*

(Top image: Rebecca A Wills at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

10/11/2021
3 min
3 years
223 words

Religion

Orthodox Christianity

Before the Norman Conquest of 1066, Britain’s practice of Christianity was ‘orthodox’, i.e. faithful to the original beliefs and texts, periodically confirmed […]

Before the Norman Conquest of 1066, Britain’s practice of Christianity was ‘orthodox’, i.e. faithful to the original beliefs and texts, periodically confirmed by major theological meetings elsewhere. However, in 1054 disagreements caused the ‘Great Schism’ whereupon Eastern/Greek-speaking and Western/Latin-speaking churches separated. The Western ideology arrived with the Normans, for whom supreme religious authority was personified by the Pope in Rome alone, which was unacceptable to the East.

Pockets of interest in restoring Orthodoxy existed in the 18th and 19th centuries but little resulted until immigrants from Eastern Orthodox countries like Greece and Poland in the 20th century brought it with them. There are currently more than 100 Orthodox parishes in the UK, including many Russian and Serbian communities. The British Orthodox Church, now autonomous and the only all-English-speaking Orthodox church in the UK, was established in 1866 as an outpost of Oriental Orthodoxy though it faced stiff opposition.

The first Greek Orthodox church in London dates to 1677 but it was short-lived. It would take another two centuries for Orthodox churches to be properly established and in 1922 the first Orthodox bishop in Britain was appointed as head of a new ‘Archdiocese of Thyateira & Great Britain’ under the hierarchy of the ‘Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople’ (Istanbul).

(Image of inrior of St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral, London: John Salmon at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

10/11/2021
3 min
3 years
223 words

DEFRA

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is only the 10th biggest UK government department in terms of staff numbers, […]

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is only the 10th biggest UK government department in terms of staff numbers, but its remit is wide-ranging and pivotal for the country’s well-being. Indeed it requires the collaboration and support of 33 different agencies in order to cover its workload. The top politician in DEFRA is the Secretary of State, also known as ‘The Environment Secretary’.

DEFRA was set up in 2002 in an amalgamation of other departments, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food (MAFF). It is tasked with handling issues including:

sustainable agriculture
countryside stewardship
food supply chain
animal health and welfare
air quality
recycling
birds and wildlife
public access to common land
chemical usage
fishing fleets
flood risks
forestry
non-native invasive weeds

On top of this and more, DEFRA is obliged to deal with opposing lobby groups, some of whom want compensation for losses of various kinds, while others seek incentives to put new policies into operation. Changes designed to bring about the current vogue of ‘sustainability’ often put a strain on those on the ground who have the on-hands experience. However, the recent release from EU rule is being seen as a good opportunity to re-focus on homeland priorities.

(Image: Neil Theasby at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

08/11/2021
3 min
3 years
210 words

Geography & Environment

Belfast

The city of Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, has endured its fair share of bombings, both during WW2 and throughout ‘The Troubles’ (1968-98), […]

The city of Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, has endured its fair share of bombings, both during WW2 and throughout ‘The Troubles’ (1968-98), which accounted for around 45,000 detonations. It has also seen the growth and decline of its manufacturing industries and had its Irish counterpart, Dublin, overtake it massively in size in recent decades.

Belfast became established thanks to its import/export trades in the period of the ‘Ulster planters‘ in the early 1600s. Its industries included linen-making, introduced by the Huguenots, and at one time Belfast was nicknamed ‘Linenopolis’. It was also known for whiskey distilling and heavy engineering.

Despite its ups and downs, Belfast has a knack for regenerating itself and making the best of its resources. In the 18th century this included cutting new channels bypassing the loops of the River Lagan in order to improve access to the docks. Tourists today flock to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, as of course the shipyards are famous for launching the RMS threesome named Olympic, Britannic and Titanic. The Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company turned out numerous liners and tankers and their huge yellow cranes, ‘Samson’ (348ft. high) and ‘Goliath’ (315ft.) remain today as iconic landmarks.

(Image showing Samson & Goliath: Rossographer at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)

07/11/2021
3 min
3 years
205 words

English language

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in ‘British India’, a place he loved, settled awhile in the USA with his American wife […]

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in ‘British India’, a place he loved, settled awhile in the USA with his American wife Carrie, but lived mostly in England. He had a life full of “Triumph and Disaster”, to borrow a phrase from his celebrated poem of 1895, ‘If-‘, eventually published in 1910. The complete line ~ “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same” ~ is etched above the players’ entrance at Wimbledon‘s Centre Court.

He began work as a journalist but after his first book, ‘Plain Tales from the Hills” (1888) was successful, he embraced a writing career, producing classics such as ‘The Jungle Book’ (1894), ‘Kim’ (1901) and the ‘Just So Stories’ (1902). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.

However, two of Kipling’s three children died tragically: his 6-year-old daughter Josephine from pneumonia after a transatlantic sea voyage in 1899 and his 18-year-old son John in war-torn France in 1915. Kipling had pulled strings to get John enlisted despite the lad’s poor eyesight. After this he never wrote children’s stories again. Kipling’s ashes are in Westminster Cathedral and his house in Sussex, Bateman’s, is open to visitors courtesy of The National Trust.

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

06/11/2021
3 min
3 years
207 words

Inventions

Polythene and Perspex

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was once the UK’s largest manufacturing company and from the 1930s to the 1960s its Plastics Division was […]

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was once the UK’s largest manufacturing company and from the 1930s to the 1960s its Plastics Division was a hub of innovation, some by design, some by accident (e.g. polythene). Other departments were also involved in producing new plastics that are still in use today, such as Perspex (ICI brand name).

In 1931 Dr John W.C. Crawford (1901-87) of the Explosives Division devised a synthesis (later known as the Stevenston Process) that led to the first commercial production of clear, tough PMMA sheets, named ‘Perspex’ in 1934. He had developed research from ICI’s Dyestuffs Division ~ an unlikely combination at first glance.

In 1933 Eric Fawcett (1927-2000) and Reginald Gibson (1902-83) at ICI’s Cheshire plant, found a white waxy substance resulting from one of their explosive experiments in which they heated ethylene and benzaldehyde to 170°C in high pressure. This was the first polyethylene (a.k.a. polythene) synthesis but their work was halted by safety concerns.

However, in 1935, ICI colleagues including Sir Michael Perrin (1905-88) and W.R. Dermot Manning (1903-84) resumed the project with better equipment. Another fluke, whereby oxygen leaked into their ethylene mixture, created a white powder which was more amenable to mass production. Its insulation properties enabled the first airborne radar in WW2.

(Images: pipes by publicdomainpictures.net and 1956 Rolls Royce with perspex sunroof by Brian Snelson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

05/11/2021
3 min
3 years
232 words

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Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.