UK2012 ISSUE 18

 It seems I made a commitment to finish off Birmingham and move on to some of the things closer to home.  To that end, the Stafforshire Hoard, a single room in the Birmingham Art Museum, was a real find.  It captured our attention, or more accurately a docent captured our attention for more than an hour!  It wasn't so much what there was to see in the exhibit, but how it came to be there at all and the glimpse we got in to how an archaeologist approaches interpreting what they have found.  The "Hoard" is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found.  The initial find was by a man with a metal detector searching in a recently ploughed field.  In England a find of this nature is to be reported to the coroner (?!) who will make a determination as to its value and whether the finder has a right to keep the booty.  In the end a team of archaeologist excavated the area and recovered in excess of 1800 items of gold and silver.  It is remarkable for being almost exclusively war-gear, with an extraordinary quantity of pommel caps, hilt plates and shield bosses.  Many feature beautiful garnet inlays or animals in elaborate filigree designs.  The odd thing was there was not a single item that could be attributed to a woman.  Little was complete, it was more a collection of oddments, bits and pieces.  They have tentatively dated these artifacts to the 7th or 8th centuries.

 Although, there was nothing especially exciting or wondrous to see, the learning opportunity was outstanding.  The possible explanations the curator wove around the how and why were fascinating.  What they know of the origin of the gold and uncut jewels is extensive, while who or where the components were fashioned in to decorative pieces is totally unknown.  Was it a collection made by a soldier from a succession of battles, could it have been stolen from a kings treasury, why was it hidden and more than that why was it never retrieved.   In the end the most thought provoking idea was that of value.  His

Sutton Hoo Burial Mask

contention was that at that time gold and silver had no intrinsic value, they were quite simply metals that were useful as decorations because they were easy to work with.  In an earlier time the Romans used metal coinage for commerce but circa 600 the peoples populating this area would have almost undoubtedly operated on a barter system.  Genghis Khan and his armies were only interested in horses and a little pillaging and spoiling, I suppose.  So why then collect the metal decorations that so obviously came from tools of war?  Many were obviously Christian but have been bent or otherwise damaged, is that significant?  So many questions and no answers.  There is nothing to use as a comparison except perhaps the masks from Sutton Hoo.  btw.  I know nothing of

Museum Skylight

Sutton Hoo but I need to go there . . . masks, possible viking ships, the things of legends.  I only wish I could remember half of what he said.

So enough of Birmingham and Art Museums and on to a museum of a totally different sort.  Taylors Bell Foundry, a happy find when driving in to Loughborough (Leuf burra).  When travelling around the UK keep your eyes open for brown signs with white lettering, they often show the way places of interest.   As you might expect Taylors Bell Foundry makes bells, not little hand bells or pretty little things to hang on a wind chime, not cow bells or ship's bells but

How bells are "stored" when not being rung

BELLS.  Their business is bells for churches, meant to be hung in belfrys and rung by pulling on ropes.  I find that once again I have forgotten most of the details but  a few bits I have held on to . . . they tune the bells after they have been cast.  Churches order bells that ring in certain tones so that a peal of bells actually has an intended sound and structure.   Each bell is a unique creation for it's recipient, there are no off the shelf bells.  A mold is made out of loam, sand, hay and horse manure!  They get buried in a pit of sand (the same sand had been in use since the 1880's) and the molten metal is poured in to the mold.  Minutiae alert, they stir the molten metal with a willow pole to remove air bubbles

Birmingham Museum

before pouring it in to the molds.  Willow poles, not some new technological marvel but a piece of a tree.  The building looks just like others I have seen in the states, red brick but painted white on the inside, quite tall and narrow with a gantry crane that runs the length of building for moving cauldrons of molten metal.  There are only two bell foundrys left in Britain and they are responsible for fashioning bells for use all over the world, the United States included.

Moving from one kind of manufacturing to another we made a trip to two different potteries in Derbyshire (pronounce darby not derby).  Denby Potteries makes what I call stone ware, not fine china.  It is easy to find their products in the states and I actually have a teapot and cups which we purchased as seconds in the 70's.  There was a time when all their products were hand painted (true of the Arabesque pieces I own) but in

B'ham Victorian Shopping District

 this day of mass production they actually use transfers to apply the designs.  I am by no means saying that it is not a highly skilled job, but it is not what it used to be.  Plates and platters and other flat pieces are actually created by pressing or stamping lumps of clay between two patterns but after that they are trimmed and prepped and generally finished by hand.

The really fascinating process was how things like cups, jugs, teapots and other pieces designed to contain things were shaped.  They start with a mold in the shape of the items being created, all the bumps and ridges, indentations and spouts, everything but the handles.  The molds

Denby Arabesque

are made of plaster and come in two halves which fit together and are held in place with large rubber bands.  The clay has water added to it until it is pourable (slip) and each of the assembled molds is filled with the liquid clay. The molds are then placed on a slow moving conveyor belt.  When they reach the end of the line the porous plaster mold has absorbed  some of liquid leaving behind the desired thickness of sold clay in the shape of the item being made.  The remaining slip is poured out of the mold and the item is allowed to continue drying until it is solid enough to be removed from the mold. 

Once the mold is removed handles are attached.  A little slip is used as "glue" and it's amazing how it adheres immediately, even better than super glue.  There's more cleaning up and grinding down and inspection before the pieces are fired in a kiln that must be a city block long.  They travel through taking something like 18 hours to go from beginning to end.  The kilns run 24/7, it is more expensive to shut them down and bring them back up to temperature that to leave them run even when they close for holidays.  Next comes the application of colours and designs.  I am sure everyone has seen a cup with one colour on the inside and another on the outside.  How that is accomplished elsewhere I have no idea, but at Denby the interior and lip are done, I'm not sure how, by one technician.  It is then handed off to another who actually dips the article in a vat of spinning "paint" or more accurately glaze, to apply colour to the exterior.  Rather precise work, say what.

Royal Derby Imari Hedgehog

Think you probably get the picture by now, Denby was definitely an interesting tour.  Just for contrast we went to the Royal Crown Derby Pottery works where they make fine bone china.  The processes were the same, but the product is something else entirely.  For starters anything labelled as "bone" china actually has 20% ash  from the bones of large animals, think horses and elephants, added to the clay.  The resulting pieces are much finer and more delicate, as in the difference between a tea cup and saucer and as opposed to a mug.  They use lots of real gold for decorative edges etc and their things are generally quite opulent and somewhat over the top.  The Hedgehog paperweight above retails for something on the order of $250 and it can't be much more than 6 inches high!  Fortunate for Mick there was nothing there I was interested in purchasing, even their seconds were out of my price range. 

Things I have learned:

1.  Pencil erasers are called rubbers.
2.  Kibworth Beauchamp is pronounced Kibworth Beacham.
3.  This is the place to find treasure; you must hand it over to the authorities but you will be compensated with it full estimated value.  No need to sell it on the black market or pay an auction house a commission.
4.  Walton, as a part of a place name, means "where the British live" in Anglo Saxon.
5.   Both Denby and Derby pottery works recycle over 95% of they clay that "wasted" in their manufacturing process.  If it has not been fired it crushed and put back in to the process for creating the liquid clay.  If it has been fired it is crushed and used as a base layer for roadbed construction. 
6.  The plaster molds used in the Denby plant are used about 30 times before imperfections make them unusable.  They are then sold off and are used in the creation of plasterboard. 

UK 2012 ISSUE 17

B'ham Facade

Our time here is slipping away and we are trying to make the most of it with day trips to nearby sights.  Our first destination was Birmingham (pronounced brr ming gum by the locals) to see the Back to Backs or courtyard housing.  Despite all my questions I never did quite understand how they were constructed . . . were they built to fill a  square city block or what.  In the end, the essence of them is one half of a series of units face the street while their mirror opposite face a courtyard all the while they share a common back wall.  I think perhaps it was more like a row each, on two parallel streets while the other two ends were a blank wall or contained things like privies and storage.  The units we visited were the last remaining such buildings and have been preserved by the National Trust.

Just a quick pitch for the National Trust, we purchased memberships earlier this year, which has meant our admission to all of their  properties has been free (well kinda) and we have seen many.  They own in excess of 300 properties in Great Britain and Wales and have reciprocal agreements with the National Trust organisation in Scotland.  Their raison d'etre is the preservation of historical properties.  Many are stately home that have been donated by the owners who can no longer pay the death duties or otherwise do the necessary maintenance on the buildings.  Little Moreton Hall, the black and white Elizabethan building I blogged about earlier, was one such property.  It was bequeathed to the National Trust when there were no surviving family members.  Others we have visited have been factories and mills that were shut down due to the changing economic climate or because they have become obsolete.  In the end they provide a museum like atmosphere and help preserve the history of the industrial revolution and beyond.

Back to Back Courtyard

So back to Birmingham and the Back to Backs.  The National Trust  provides a guided tour that takes you through four of the units with each representing a different era in their existence.  The buildings are three story brick construction and there is a common wash house and privies in the courtyard. The earliest "re-creation" dates to the 1840's and has no running water, gas or electric while the last is a tailors shop that was last in use in the 1970's.  My understanding is that they were middle class dwellings designed for the working man and his family but that often meant Mom, Dad, three or more children and a lodger; all this in two bedrooms above a living/dining/kitchen space on the ground floor. 

Back to Back Scullery

There were blocks and blocks of this style of dwelling built in the early 1800's to house the growing population needed to supply workers for the factories.

We lived in Birmingham in the early '70s and Mick did his Masters at the University of Aston in Birmingham, which is right in the downtown and not far from the Back to Backs.  We were appalled, amazed and overjoyed at how little we actually knew about a place we lived for more than two years.  For example, they have major Jewelry Quarter of which I was totally unaware.  We did a little wandering around and took a tour of a jewelry manufacturing facility which was a going family concern during the period 1880-1960.  This business, much like those belonging to the National Trust, was shut up and left with all the machinery and artifacts in place when the last remaining relative died.  Someone quite literally locked the doors and walked away leaving bookwork and records, tools and machinery, tea bags and jars of marmite.  We also stumbled on a pen museum which was not so much a museum but an overwhelming collection of old pens and pen paraphernalia and some of the machinery that was used in the production of nibs for fountain pens. The volunteer that was there that day was having a grand time demonstrating some of the equipment to a group of young people.

Bull Ring Shopping Centre

We re-discovered the Bull Ring Shopping Centre, which, although it existed when we lived there has been totally renovated/reconstructed/reconfigured.  It is reputed to be the largest shopping centre in Western Europe but in the end there is nothing out of the ordinary there.  It is like every other shopping centre, an endless parade of  the same shops and business you see pretty much the world over.  Large corporations have a lot to answer for.  I'll get off my soap box long enough to allow as how the spaces they created were pleasant enough to encourage us to walk around. 

Birmingham Square

We explored the canal basin and walked some of the canal that ran through the city centre.  Some of it was old and quite rough but there was a general veneer of renewal about Gas Street and it's environs.  One area of new construction particularly pleased Mick, what with his predilection for New Urbanist Design standards.   There appeared to housing above commercial at street level and well designed public spaces.  Despite the fact that the weather was tending toward damp people seemed to using the space, sitting and reading, eating lunches and relaxing. 

This next image is of a building called the Rotunda.  It was brand new when we lived in Birmingham as were the shops on New Street Station.  Now the Rotunda is a Grade II listed building, which means it is a building of special historical or architectural interest.   When it was new

The Rotunda

it was considered to be something of a joke and an eyesore, at least by those students with which we associated at the University.  Now, although they may be able to mess around with the interior,they must maintain the exterior and it cannot be demolished without permission from Parliament!  What it was in the '70's I don't recall but now it is high end apartments and flats. 

New Street Station was also new in the 70s. It was our shopping destination of choice.  They had Mothercare and Habitat, Boots the Chemist and W.H. Smith Booksellers.  It was also the source of an ongoing joke about not being caught without a penny on New Street Station.  Back in the day it was not entirely uncommon to find you needed to insert a penny in to the door of the toilet to gain access.  There were also attendants always present to maintain the cleanliness and ensure all necessary paper products were available, so a penny was not an unreasonable fee.  Despite the necessity to pay there was always at least one stall that was free, read that as

Groby Fishing Pool

unmaintained.  When new Street Station was completed there were no free toilets, hence "don't get caught short on New Street Station without a penny."  Also paying for the used of a toiled would seem to be the genesis of the euphemism for going to the toilet of needing to "spend a penny".  Oh yes, asking for the restroom or bathroom over here may get you the necessary directions but if your accent doesn't give you away as an American this word usage definitely will.  You will find the "facilities" labelled either Toilet or WC (water closet). 

New Street Station is a railway station, of which there are at least two others in the the city centre.  By the look of the number of people we saw in the area I would imagine it, along with Moor Street and Snow Hill stations are the major means of transportation in and out of the downtown shopping district.  Parking is limited and navigating the city centre crazy making.  About five square blocks, or possibly more, of the centre have been pedestrianised, ie., no vehicular traffic is allowed during business hours.  Where cars are allowed it is a one way system intersected with block square roundabouts and lousy signage.  Just in case that is not intimidating enough much of the access from outside the centre goes through tunnels that twist and turn so that once above ground you still have no earthly idea of where you could possibly be.  There are streets and building that I would love to photograph that I saw when we were in the car, but for all the walking we did I never saw them again.   How we got around with a car is beyond me and if it weren't for the Pagoda that is in the middle of one of the roundabouts (making it easily identifiable) we might still be going round and round looking for our way home. 

Think it must be time to get this out there in to the ether before it gets too long.  Next time out the Staffordshire Hoard, Taylors Bell Foundry, Pottery and Bone China and a little history of Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth Field.  


Things I have learned:

1.  On the A5 there is a town called Weston Under Lizard as well as Crackleybank.  Wikipedia has failed me, I cannot find an explanation for the names.
2.  The Welsh National Bread is Bara Brith which translates spotty bread.
The name is understandable when you realise it has raisins and currants in it. 
3.  The phrase most commonly used to describe a senior discount or price is concessionaires.  Other Britishisms for those of a certain age. . . OAP or Old Age Pensioner and a little less pc Wrinklies.