The Joy of Six 1373

"Weaponising food deprivation has been Israeli policy for decades. As a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it in 2006, the government’s aim, in strictly restricting the entrance of foodstuffs into Gaza, was to 'put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' Now, Israel seems to have committed fully to the latter goal." Jennifer Zacharia details the sufferings of the Palestinians.

Roland Smith weighs the objections to the European Convention on Human Rights and says we'll need good arguments against them if we're to resist the coming campaign for Britain to withdraw from it. 

"I moved to the city eight years ago to study neuroscience at University College London. Since then, rents have nearly doubled but the square footage of my digs has stayed the same. As I grow up in age and out in size, I begin to see that the hoped-for upgrade that should come with time now looks impossible. My generation is running but we’re not moving." Rose Dodd reports on life as a private tenant in London.

Michael Rosen proves that educational research did not begin with Michael Gove.

Londonopia tells the story of a unique London store: "Arthur Liberty wasn’t just flogging  fabrics. He was hawking a vision - a sensual rebellion against the stiff moral corsetry of Victorian Britain. Where others sold sensible serge, Liberty offered peacock-feather glamour, hand-painted decadence, and the vague but thrilling possibility that you might run away with an artist and spend your life eating figs in an atelier."

"War is a dreadful thing, amongst all of the horrific things that human inflicts upon other human in the name of 'war' there are some events that stand out as atrocities: one such atrocity took place in the aftermath of the battle of Naseby." Keep Your Powder Dry tries to pin down the exact location of The Farndon Massacre in the villages just south of Market Harborough.

An entrance to the WWII prisoner of war camp in Farndon Road, Market Harborough

When I posted the USAAF photograph of Market Harborough in 1943 or 1944, one of the features I singled out was the prisoner of war camp in Farndon Road.

I was down there this morning, and I'm pretty sure that this long since fenced off turning on to Farndon Road was once one of the entrances to that camp.

There's lots of information about the camp on the East Farndon website, including friendships between German prisoners and local families that lasted long after the war.

I'm used to seeing pictures of village children with Italian prisoners of war, but it's a pleasant surprise to read these accounts about German prisoners. Makes you proud to be British - the only sad thing is that The Bell at East Farndon closed years ago.

I've stolen the map below from that site. It shows the camp and also the cinder track in Welland Park I blogged about recently.

I wonder if the overgrown entrance I photographed today is where the children from the home in East Farndon stopped to talk to the prisoners through the wire on their way to the pictures in Market Harborough?

Children in care, prisoners of war and modernism in East Farndon

East Farndon has no shop, no pub, no school and no post office. There is a church, a village hall and a defibrillator.

Like a lot of village over the Northamptonshire border, you find that the modern main road bypasses its ancient heart. So East Farndon has an impressive hollow way and a Back Lane which is home to some of its most important buildings.

There you will find Farndon Hall, which is too much of a wedding cake for my taste, and The Manor.

Though it's too secluded to photograph without trespass, you will also find The Limes, which was once a children's home. It was opened in 1912 to house children previously housed in Market Harborough workhouse.

The excellent East Farndon Village website has the memories of one former inmate:

My name is Edward (Teddy) Davis and I arrived at the home at the age of about 4 years, which would be 1943, and I left about 7 years old. I went to school and Sunday school at East Farndon. 

It was a boy’s only home with ages ranging from 4 to 15. The Master of the home was blind. His wife was the Matron. She was a kind lady. We were fed and looked after very well and as long as we behaved, we were not punished. .... 

Each evening just before bedtime we were allowed to listen to “Dick Barton Special agent” on the wireless (very exciting). It used to be in the time slot now occupied by“The Archers”.

Every Saturday morning two of the oldest boys would march us in twos to visit the cinema in Market Harborough to see the children’s matinee, where we would sit and munch our issued 3 digestive biscuits and a handful of penny chews while watching the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey (Westerns), Tarzan and various cartoons.

Along the journey to Market Harborough was an Italian Prisoner of War camp and we would cross the road to talk to them through the wire fence.

That camp was on Farndon Road in Market Harborough, its site now occupied by the Gracelands mobile home park. No doubt the children found they had much in common with their fellow captives.

The elegant St John the Baptist stands on the hill at the top of the village. I didn't look for it on Friday, but close to, on the way to Great Oxendon, is a surprisingly wild area with gorse bushes. But then Northamptonshire can often surprise you: East Farndon has dry stones walls.

But the building that impressed me most is the elusive Kiln Yard, built in 1934 in the modernist style and now Listed. The tower was originally unglazed, but that idea did not survive exposure to many British winters.

Like The Lines, Kiln Yard is hard to photograph without tresspass, so I contented myself with catching glimpses of it from unexpected angles.

The village website records that the house was built for Edward Cox, the managing director of  R. & W.H. Symington, the Market Harborough corset makers.

He and his brother were ousted in a 1962 boardroom coup. It should have been an ATV soap opera.

From the Judith Stone to Ten Locks Village

I returned from the Judith Stone along a bridleway, which began with views of Market Harborough and a lovely descent through a wood. A couple passed me going uphill and by the time they reached the top they had revealed themselves as spectral.

Then I emerged from the woods into a partially finished housing estate, Ten Locks Village, complete with Covid precautions.

The estate was not on my elderly large-scale map and I had to ask directions to find my way out of it. Eventually I emerged at Fardon Fields Farm Shop.

Market Harborough to East Farndon to see the Judith Stone

Here are some photos I took on the way to the Judith Stone on Friday. Having checked on Google Street View to make sure there was a pavement all the way to East Farndon, I walked along the Farndon Road.

Then I took the minor road that goes to Lubenham before taking the bridleway that passes through the field where the stone is.

I tried what was meant to be a more adventurous route on the way back.

The Judith Stone near East Farndon

The Judith Stone stands, or squats, in a field near East Farndon, a Northamptonshire village to the south of Market Harborough in peril of being absorbed into Market Harborough. They call it Little Bowden Syndrome.

Geologists maintain that it is a glacial erratic - a stone differing in size and type from those found in the area because a retreating glacier left it there when the Ice Age went out of fashion.

Historians say Judith was a niece of William the Conqueror and was granted land hereabouts. And. as a local landmark, the stone was used as a boundary marker.

I visited it decades ago and was back there again today. I found the East Farndon Psychogeographical Society (Ovine Division) holding a meeting when I arrived. 

Could I arrange for Iain Sinclair to come and address them? they asked. Or maybe John Rogers?

I also found that some joker had left a slice of  a quartzite rock next to it.

The Black Beast of Harborough is back

Lock your doors! Bar your windows! The Harborough Mail reports a new sighting of the Black Beast of Harborough:

A large black labrador-sized animal was seen near Arthingworth. 

It was spotted from about 40 metres away through a low-powered telescope on Wednesday, May 2. 

The report, made to the Big Cats in Britain group, described the animal as black with white patches on the front. 

It was definitely not a dog, said the report. 

The incident is the latest in a series of sightings of ‘black beasts’ stalking the Harborough countryside which go back as far as the 1990s. 

These include sightings at Arthingworth, Kibworth, East Farndon and in Harborough.

We blogged about a sighting of the Black Beast in Foxton at the start of the year. More, as ever, on Rutland & Leicestershire Panther Watch.