Photo : Shakespeare's tomb

The Bard's tomb in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon.

I took a number of photographs in historic Stratford-upon-Avon yesterday, you can see them all here.

10 fascinating facts about Erdington

I am thinking about doing a Erdington history blog, while i decide here is a little list of 10 fascinating facts about this village i live in.

1. Chester Road probably predates the Romans and as you can thus imagine is one of the oldest roads in the area. Between Kenilworth and Brownhills the road follows the route of the ancient Welsh Road.
2. The Dwarf Holes were mysterious artificial caves, which were lost due to the construction of the Gravelly Hill Interchange. They may have dated from the Stone Age. They were mentioned in deeds dating from the 15th century in any case.
3. The brick factory on Holly Lane supplied the bricks for many of Erdington's houses up until WW2. Twenty million bricks were used to build Fort Dunlop.
4. Fort Dunlop was at one time the largest tyre factory in the British Commonwealth, it was built where it was because of the ready supply of water from the River Tame and surrounding fields.
5. The murder of Mary Ashford in Erdington in 1817 and the resulting trial ended up with the British legal system being changed after the defendant Abraham Thornton challenged his accuser (Mary's younger brother) to a duel who, as he was just a young lad, declined thus forcing the case to be dismissed. News of this case travelled far and wide, when Thornton tried to emigrate to the US he had a lot of trouble trying to get a ship in Liverpool as the fellow passengers did not want to share the same boat as a "murderer".
6. Number 2 Fern Road was the last house with a thatched roof in Birmingham though it's roof was replaced in 1944 due to the fire risk.
7. Six Ways is reputed to be the oldest traffic roundabout in the UK.
8. In the 1900s Birmingham Council planned to build a gas works on the Glenthorne estate, luckily they built the Birches Green housing estate instead.
9. The Acorn Hotel was located on the High Street on the junction of Church Road up until the Second World War, a pub called The Acorn occupies part of the same site.
10. Two companies bid for the railway line from Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield, the winning company building what is now the Cross City Line. The alternative plan envisaged a rail route to Erdington that would have gone along the Tyburn Road and Wood End Lane with stations on Mason Road and Orphanage Road.

Bibliography
Arkinstall M & Baird P (1976), 'Erdington Past & Present', Birmingham Public Libraries
Baxter M & Drake P (1995), 'Erdington', Tempus
Baxter M & Drake P (2003), 'Erdington Vol 2', Tempus
Maxam A (2008), 'Vintage Images of Erdington Birmingham', Adlard

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

From the BBC

"Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings."

Huguette Clark: New York's billionaire recluse dies, aged 104

From the Guardian

"For 80 years her life was set in aspic, preserved as if in a time warp in an ever-shrinking social world that ended with her death this week aged 104 in a hospital room accompanied only by the nurses caring for her and her beloved French dolls."

Help the Aston Manor Road Transport Museum!

The Aston Manor Road Transport Museum is a great place which i have visitedquite a lot over the years. It is under serious threat of closure though! Have a look at their website where they explain the situation and show we can help. Lets hope they can survive because their collection is terrific!

Anthropocene: Have humans created a new geological age?

From the BBC

"Over the last 11,700 years - an epoch that geologists call the Holocene - climate has remained remarkably stable.

This allowed humans to plan ahead, inventing agriculture, cities, communication networks and new forms of energy."

Isn't this just short-termism and Human ego though? Previous epochs lasted millions of years, because of us we need to change one after a few thousand years?

Time is short in the last Nazi hunter's quest for justice

From the Indy

"For someone who enjoys the awesome reputation as the world's last Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff is disarmingly candid about how he started in the business of tracking down the perpetrators of genocide. Born in 1948, he had neither direct experience of the Holocaust nor any burning teenage ambition to bring mass murderers to justice. In fact he was more interested in basketball."

'Cutty Sark' goes up in the world

From the Indy

"One of Britain's best-preserved maritime treasures has been hoisted more than 10 feet into the air.

The Cutty Sark, the world's only surviving tea clipper, was lifted about 11ft 6in above the bottom of its dry berth in Greenwich, south east London."

Libya 1911: How an Italian pilot began the air war era

From the BBC

"Italy recently said it was ready to join in Nato's air attacks on targets in Libya - and with the announcement came a sense of history repeating itself.

It was in Libya, almost exactly a century ago, that a young Italian pilot carried out the first ever air raid."

Mysterious Maine earthquakes caused by Ice Age rebound

From Wired

"On the last day of April and first five days of May, dozens of tiny earthquakes caused Maine’s eastern coast to tremble. What could have shaken this geologically quiet region, located in the middle of a tectonic plate, far from any active faults?"

5 May 1821: The first words published in the Manchester Guardian

From the Guardian (see link for image of first page)

"Napoleon had died that very day, but there was no mention of his death for weeks. Instead, the Guardian immortalised a lost labrador on a front page made up entirely of advertisements. News did not replace ads on page one until 1952."

Last WWI combat veteran Claude Choules dies aged 110

From the BBC

"The world's last known combat veteran of World War I, Claude Choules, has died in Australia aged 110.

Known to his comrades as Chuckles, British-born Mr Choules joined the Royal Navy at 15 and went on to serve on HMS Revenge."

The number of people with living memory of the war must be dwindling too, it will slip from living memory within 10-15 years i suspect as the 19th century recently did though of course WW1 is an event which remains vivid in our collective memory thanks to the advent of 20th century media technologies.

Giant ants spread in warm climes

From the BBC

"A giant ant growing over 5cm (2in) long crossed the Arctic during hot periods in the Earth's history, scientists say, using land bridges between continents.

The ant, named Titanomyrma lubei, lived about 50 million years ago and is one of the largest ant species ever found."

The concept of land bridges across the Arctic during very warm periods is very interesting.

Lost Civilizations : 12 Societies that Vanished in Mystery

From WebEcoist

"Why would a flourishing civilization, advanced for its time, suddenly cease to exist, its inhabitants gone and its architecture abandoned? Conspiracy theorists offer all manner of offbeat explanations including alien abduction, but in the case of these 12 societies, the causes were likely more mundane: natural disasters, climate  change, invasions and economic irrelevance. Still, we don’t know – and likely never will – exactly what happened to bring about the end of the Khmer Empire of Cambodia, the Minoan society of Crete or two ancient civilizations right here in the United States."