"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
As is traditional in a dry summer, Our History Underfoot has been to Ladybower Reservoir to see what remains of Derwent village have been revealed by the receding waters.
In a second video, he wonders at the many people who claim to have seen the steeple of Derwent church standing proud above the waves when they are not old enough to have done so. It was dynamited in 1947, partly because visitors had taken to swimming out to reach it.
Proof that the historical record is wrong? No, just another reminder of the fallibility of human memory.
"Why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?" Noel Titheradge investigates a continuing scandal.
James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."
Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.
"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.
Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.
"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.
Before Yes Minister made him famous in 1980, Nigel Hawthorne served a long apprenticeship in the acting profession. But I had not grasped till recently just how long that apprenticeship had been.
If you click on the arrow above, you will see him in a scene from Going Straight, the short-lived sitcom that followed Norman Stanley Fletcher after his release from the Slade Prison of Porridge.
That scene dates from 1978, but he had a bit part in an episode of Dad's Army as early as 1969. I recall a story that someone had gone to David Croft on Hawthorne's behalf, saying he was a very good actor who was getting many parts and asking if Croft could offer him something. Croft did, though as I recall Hawthorne doesn't really convince as a lorry driver.
But I've now know that Hawthorne's apprenticeship stretched right back to the start of the Fifties, and two of this blog's heroines helped me discover this.
Here's Sheila Hancock writing in The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw:
I was thrilled to be so near London where someone might see me. I was playing quite a good role but whenever I was in danger of getting a laugh, Frank would intervene with, "No, don't laugh – poor soul – she went to the RADA, you know" (pronounced radar by Frank). "No perlease, perlease have some respect."
Nigel Hawthorne and I watched in awe as he jettisoned the script and went off into wild fantasies of his own It was one of Frank's frequent periods in the theatrical wilderness and no one important came near us, but supporting this anguished man gave us a friend for life.
With the help of the British Newspaper Archive I can tell you that this all took place in 1956.
Two years earlier, Hawthorne had been in the supporting cast when Freda Jackson returned to her alma mater, the Theatre Royal, Northampton, to play Marguerite Gautier in The Lady of the Camelias. He was in the repertory company there in 1954 and 1955.
He was acting with the company at the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, as early as 1951. Hawthorne had first gone on the stage in South Africa in 1950, and was to alternate between Britain and South Africa for a few years without finding much in success in either.
And we have a part for a third heroine of the blog. Because, just as Sheila Hancock does, Hawthorne said he owed his career to Joan Littlewood.
Here's Markland Taylor reviewing Hawthorne's Straight Face, The Autobiography, which was published just after his death, in Variety:
Hawthorne’s luck changed magnificently when he downed six bottles of Guinness before auditioning for a role in a production of Littlewood’s hit
Oh! What a Lovely War planned for a tour of England and Europe, and was cast.
This led to his invaluable relationship with Littlewood and his career blossomed, leading to highly rewarding work on stage, screen and television.
This was in 1964, so Hawthorne still had 16 years to wait before be became famous overnight. This is a story about talent and persistence, but it may ultimately be one about having the right mentor.
Derbyshire Times wins our Headline of the Day Award by a distance with its tale of crime-fighting llamas.
The judges have asked me to point out that my photograph shows alpacas, who would probably have pointed the offender on his way after asking him to admire their hairdos.
Here's another great video from Trekking Exploration – like and subscribe everybody. I've visited the sites four of the five Long Eaton stations he identifies myself.
The first would be really useful to the town now, as it;s on the line from Nottingham to St Pancras.
The second is the one I haven't visited.
The third was in the centre of town - the line is still in use, but only by goods trains.
The fourth is Trent Station, one of those large interchange stations in the middle of nowhere that the Midland Railway went in for. Here I have the advantage over the video as I have photographed the very overgrown bridge it mentions. You can see it below. On my first hunt for it I got as far as Trent Cottages.
The fifth is the Long Eaton station that is open today, though its further from the town than any of the other four.
"Events are moving so quickly that it’s worth stopping to assess where we are. The U.S. government is currently building massive detention facilities, already detaining tens of thousands of people there and elsewhere, with incompetent and deeply racist secret police sweeping undocumented all kinds of people – immigrants, those with their paperwork in order, and US citizens alike – off the street." Andrea Pitzer says the correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.
Tanya Park argues that banning social media for children misses the point: "If we’re serious about protecting children online, we need to regulate the companies, not ban the children. That means enforcing existing law, strengthening platform obligations, eliminating addictive design, and empowering young people with the knowledge and tools to navigate digital spaces safely."
James Meek visited Greenland last year as Trump was starting to make noises about annexing it.
"The Peggy who emerges from these formative years is part Girl Guide, part witch: a Gothic dreamer with a work ethic; Madame Sosostris meets the persona Atwood calls ‘Ms Fixit’. She marries a fellow Victorianist because it makes practical sense but yearns for something else. She makes her own clothes but also fancy-dress costumes and puppets." Sophie Oliver reviews Margaret Atwood's Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts."
Lolly Willowes is a work of modernism not in the sense of formal innovation but in its statement that after the first world war the old order was no longer tenable. The novel is a rejection of Victorian pieties as subversive as Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians." Henry Wessells on Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel.
Johnny Campbell goes for a New Year walk in Edale and thinks of those who fought to give us access to this landscape.
With most of the low-hanging fruit having been picked, canal "restoration" projects now tend to involve the digging miles of new route. The Derby Canal is no exception.
This video illustrates plans the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust has had for years. They obtained planning permission for the scheme back in 2011, but funding it in the current economic climate will be a much greater challenge.
Still, it would be great to see boats on the Derwent in the centre of Derby.
The current drought is having a striking effect in Derbyshire, where the village of Derwent is emerging as the waters of Ladybower Reservoir recede. This video from Trekking Exploration (like and subscribe) shows us what can be seen this week. There will be more to come if the drought continues.
Derwent was drowned by the reservoir, which was constructed between 1935 and 1943.
The spire of the village church was originally left standing above the water and people tried to swim out to it. This was deemed too dangerous, so the church was dynamited.
We see what remains of the church today in the video, and the photo below - which I've always found deeply sinister - shows the reservoir when the church could still be seen.
Here's a discovery. In 1946 there was a plan to move the Shropshire lead-mining village of Snailbeach to a new site nearer Minsterley.
It was reported in the 15 March issue of the Shrewsbury Chronicle:
SNAILBEACH TO LEAVE ITS SHELL
Plan For New Village In Green Meadows
If the plans now being prepared by the Clun Rural District Council come to maturity the village of Snailbeach will leave its shell among the scars of old industry on the flank of the Stiperstones, and move down to a new site among pleasant green meadows a mile or so nearer to Minsterley.
The site selected is near to the old Smelthouse, the derelict building which stands at the side of the field path from Minsterley to Snailbeach. Over a cup of tea at the Stiperstones Inn Mr. William Humphrey, a member of-the Clun Council, explained to our reporter that it is hoped to build a first instalment of 16 houses out of a total of 40 to 50 within the next year. Provision has been made for a children's playground, and eventually a church and school will appear.
Temporary houses are out of the question, as at present there is no gas or electricity, but every effort will be made to provide modern amenities for both the old and new villages. Lord Bridgeman was interested himself in a project for bringing a light industry to the village, but it is yet too early to say what developments are likely.
Nothing came of the plan, but villages do get moved. Arkwright in Derbyshire was moved to a new site 30 years ago because of the danger of methane gas from a disused coal mine.
I suspect this scheme for Snaibeach is confirmation of what John Wood wrote in his 1944 book Quietest Under the Sun:
Sad to say, this became in the between-wars period one of the most utterly derelict areas in Britain proportionate to its size.
Dinting is a station on the Glossop line from Manchester Piccadilly and was also on the Great Central's Woodhead route from Manchester to Sheffield1 before that closed in 1981. Between 1968 and 1990 a nearby locomotive shed was home to the Dinting Railway Centre, where you could often find famous locomotives like Blue Peter and the Flying Scotsman visiting.
The LeiceExplore YouTube channel has rebranded as What Once Was, but offers the same high-quality nosehs around industrial and historic sites. Subscribe and like away.
Here the two Steves discover the site of the railway centre and Dinting viaduct, before exploring the station, part of which has been disused since the closure of the line to Sheffield.
Notes
The Woodhead route is the longest lost railway that I travelled on, ahead of March to Spalding and Market Harborough to Northampton.
Is the shortage of funds for canal maintenance starting to show? As the commentary on this video says, there have already been a number of serious breaches or failures of equipment reported this year.
Trekking Exploration - why not subscribe to this YouTube channel? - follows up reports of a stretch of the Erewash Canal without water, and finds they are right. Both the upper and lower gates at one lock are letting water through, so the pound above has run dry.
The Erewash stretches from Great Northern Basin at Langley Mill to the Trent at Long Eaton. It was built to connect local coal mines with the inland waterways system.
The blurb on the Court Above the Cut YouTube channel - like, subscribe and tell your friends - explains what's going on here:
Digging a new line of canal at Malswick near Newent. This exciting project from the Herefordshire & Gloucestershire canal is on land next to the old line and Gloucester & Ledbury railway. Join us as we explore the area and look into what's happened, is happening and what will happen in the future.
The line ran from the River Severn in Over through Newent, Ledbury and on to Hereford taking in three tunnels including the Oxenhall Tunnel. See where the lift bridge is going as well as the new lock to divert the canal restoration onto another new route and back onto the railway which replaced the line.
With its ruined tunnels and aqueducts, you might the think the Hereford and Gloucester is lost beyond reclamation, but there's lots of work being done on it. There's an element of poetic justice to using the alignment of the railway that was built along and across the canal after its closure.
Remember the great video Trekking Exploration video in which he traced the route of Butterley Tunnel? That's the collapsed tunnel that's likely to prevent full restoration of the Cromford Canal.
The good news is that he's gone back to this fascinating industrial and natural landscape for another look.
The blurb on YouTube explains:
In this video I explore the abandoned and drained Butterley Park Reservoir, out of use since the 1930s and once a lifeline of water for the Cromford Canal in Derbyshire.
I then follow the routs of the Reservoir before meeting up with a disused railway bridge, Swanwick Junction on the Midland Railway and then discover a Butterley Tunnel canal shaft that I can shine the light down to the water at the bottom.
I finish off by looking for a mystery set of stone steps and a doorway to a valve control that was used to allow water from Butterley Reservoir into the canal via Butterley Tunnel
The 3083-yard Butterley tunnel is the great obstacle to the full restoration on the Cromford Canal. It was condemned as beyond economic repair as long ago as 1909.
In this great video, Trekking Exploration - subscribe to his YouTube account at once - begins at Codnor Reservoir, the first of three that supplied water to the summit level of the Cromford Canal. He then visits the Eastern portal of Butterley Tunnel before following the length of it above ground to the Western portal. He ends at Hartshay Wharf near Ripley.
If you want to see what conditions are like beneath the ground, have a look at the Friends of Cromford Canal site, which has photographs from a 1979 inspection.
And the Wikipedia entry for Butterley Tunnel tells us something remarkable:
About 880 yards (800m) from the tunnel's western portal there is an underground wharf about 60 yards (55m) long with the tunnel here widened to about 16 feet (4.9m).
One of the horizontal tunnels departing from the tunnel at this point used to run to the Butterley Company's Butterley Carr Pit which opened in 1812 and loaded its coal directly into narrow boats at the underground wharf.
There were also vertical shafts from the wharf which allowed goods in tram boxes to be lowered directly from and lifted up to the Butterley Company's works (on the hill above the tunnel) to and from the underground wharf.
A very Leicestershire video filmed in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Steve and friends from LeiceExplore look at what remains of the closed stretch of the Nottingham Canal from Great Northern Basin at Langley Mill in Derbyshire to the city of Nottingham.
They end their ride at Meadow Lane Lock, where the navigable stretch of the canal joins the Trent.
