The Future is Green

 

Port Talbot steelworks

Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station

 A notable fact caught my attention this week; actually, TWO notable facts! The two being broadcast simultaneously were, I think, mere synchronicity. One was the closure of the blast furnace at the Port Talbot steelworks; two was the shutdown of the last coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire. Chance simultaneous closures in timing, perhaps, but nonetheless, significant ones. Both occurrences represent aspects of the past economic significance of the UK and both mark the 

A somewhat rosy view of the usually overcrowded and 
insanitary pit villages of the North. Many of the miners
were also keen gardeners.

present transition to a greener future. Gone are the late nineteenth century and virtually, the complete twentieth century, of the UK’s economic supremacy featuring heavy industry, chiefly in the North of the country which overtook the then more rural South in financial prosperity and, incidentally, in landscape ugliness. Steel-making in Port Talbot occurred there because of the proximity of abundant supplies of high-grade coal hewn from a number of pits in the Welsh valleys. The first coal-fired power station opened at 57, Holborn Viaduct in London in 
1882. Coal was burnt to drive a steam engine which in turn drove a 27tonne 93 kw generator. This then, initially, lit just under 1000 incandescent lamps along the street.

Descent to the coal face

Coal production in the UK reached a peak in the mid 20th century when domestic use was ubiquitous and export was healthy. The shutdown of the 57 year old plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in September 2024, thus ends 140 years of coal power generation in the U.K. It is estimated by Carbon Brief, that during that period, the U.K. burned its way through 4.6 billion tonnes of coal and 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than almost all other nations have ever produced from all fossil fuels.

Marco Polo 
Venice 1254-1324

It is believed that the Romans first saw the potential of coal and possibly started mining in the Nettlebridge area of Somerset. Marco Polo *** described coal as 'black rocks that burn like wood'. He noted that where coal was plentiful, people took two to three baths a week rather than the usual one or two a year. 

Newcomen steam engine 1712

Although demand for coal grew rapidly in the 17^th century, it was the invention of the first practical steam engine in 1712 which made the coalfields of central Scotland, south Wales, the Midlands and the North East accessible for transportation. In the early 1700s about 3 million tonnes of coal were mined each year but by the 1830s, over a hundred years later, the amount had leapt to 30 million tonnes. The opening of the first public coal-fired power station came relatively late [1882] but other, small plants followed and by the start of the 20 century, almost all of Britain’s electricity was produced by coal-generated plants. Even by 1950, 96% of coal power generation remained, and in 1966 Ferrybridge C, a so-called ‘super coal plant,’ opened to be followed by plants of similar size across Britain’s coalfields; in total, 12 were established between 1966 and 1974 and continued to need huge amounts of coal. The Miners’ Strike, so seminal in several ways, abruptly stopped mining between 1984/5 after which coal power failed to return to its pre-strike zenith. 

Orgreave, a bitter confrontation between striking
miners and the police, which exemplified the
divisive and long-lasting social and political effects
of the Miners' Strike.

In the early 1990s the dash for gas and rising environmental concerns signalled the eventual demise of coal. And over the next decade, coal plants became increasingly expensive to run as legislation insisted on expensive upgrades to coal mining to help reduce pollution and uphold increasing public concern with the environmental costs incurred. The Climate Change Act of 2008 committed to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions relative to the levels of 1990, and finally a new tax in 2013 aimed at increasing the cost of carbon emissions was eventually responsible for closing 10 of the UK's largest coal plants. The Government set out plans in 2015 to end all coal-powered generation within the next ten years but in 2021 the ban was brought forward to October 2024. This was the final coup de grace for this venerated black rock, the mining of which had established coal-related commercial and mining activities over more than a century and a half and which was responsible in the late eighteenth century for the emergence of the much-loved mining villages in the industrial North and Midlands. The social, emotional aspects of this finale to the coal industry have been divisive and long-lasting in the pit villages as the way of life over generations has been eroded or ended. The economic cost to former miners has been amplified by the non-appearance of the promised ‘green’ jobs, another area demonstrating the failure of Governmental planning and economic investment.

In the Forties, this was a common sight in various 
industrial areas: miners walking home after work, 
carrying their 'snap' tins and en route for a wash.
There were normally no pithead baths.

Auckinleck, Scotland. 
Traditional mining village complete with the coal
ration delivered and awaiting removal to the 'coal house'
at the back of the house.

                                                                          Marco Polo ***

Born in Venice in 1254 and died there in 1324 after an astonishingly adventurous life. Polo became a merchant, explorer and adventurer, travelling Europe along the Silk Road, living and exploring in China for nearly a quarter of a century.

        

Sharing the Joke

 In a rare bout of 'sorting out stuff' I recently came across the following sequence of cartoons produced by a friend and former neighbour, Pat  *****. According to the accompanying note, I had given her 'a charming little book' which I had produced and which had pleased her. Her 'thank you' was the joyful collection of her typical cartoons below, lampooning her experiences and observations of ageing. The whole delightful sequence was dated 20/10/03 and I cannot ask her permission to reprint here in my blog as really sadly she has since departed for the Great Studio in the Sky.

The reason I want to display Pat's brilliant drawings/caricatures is that so many of them echo very strongly, my own contemporary experiences now that I am 90! Pat possessed not only artistic ability and a great sense of humour but also amazing  prescience and notable perception. So this is a loving tribute to a clever, funny and wise woman who is missed and who is, moreover, missing countless opportunities to produce more of the same. 

Cartoonist extraordinaire

Wine-tasting for a 90th

Happy wanderers

 A week ago my local daughter and grand-daughter presented me with a fab 90^th birthday gift: a wine-tasting and vineyard tour at Giffords Hall Vineyard at Hartest, near Bury St Edmunds. Our personal guide Emma, [part of the tour gift] was delightful; fun and informative with an easy knowledge of the Giffords’ wines and of the vineyards. I have copied below the official short biography of the family vineyard assuming its compact description is much better than anything I could attempt, non-expert that I am.

Another example of the Mystery of the Missing Apostrophe

“Situated on an ancient glacial riverbed, our 19-acre site grows upon fertile sandy loam soil over gravel to produce quality grapes, high in natural sugars and acids, which lend themselves particularly well to sparkling and still wines. It is this special terroir which gives our wines their dry flinty quality and delicate floral accents. Pinot Blanc; Pinot Noir, both Burgundy clone and Précoce; Madeleine Angevine; Reichensteiner; Rondo and Bacchus varieties thrive here. The vineyard was established with plantings of these modern clones.”

The Giffords Hall label was officially launched in 2009 with a Rose and a Bacchus still wine, so, a young vineyard in European terms and yet, since then, over the years, Giffords Hall has achieved success at national and international levels producing elegant wines of the highest standard.

Not only grapes, not only vines, but interesting,
possibly lethal, goats as well!

Our gradual wandering down lanes from one vineyard to the next, the type of vine growing in each, identified by Emma, was interesting in vinous terms and beautiful in aesthetic, but to be outside, surrounded by green vistas in sunny breezy weather served to further embellish the already happy
spirit. The day grew into an even more leisurely but, at the same time, a more intellectually interesting pilgrimage for these three wine-lovers spanning three generations, rather more engaging than the Wife of Bath could have dreamed of! We did tell stories in comments and memories as we progressed, but mainly we luxuriated in the summer light; the cumulus clouds against an impossibly blue sky overhead; the serried ranks of green vines with certain fields ahead in growth, displaying luscious bunches of grapes tempting the passer-by while in others nearby, the grapes were still in minor mode! 

It was a rare moment for me, in a quiet life, to have a period of contentment and companionship with a shared interest in an almost silent landscape.

And there was wine-tasting to come! What a perfect conclusion to a companionable green summer day rendered perhaps even more sublime when a well-laden cheese board appeared on our table, shaded by leafy boughs!

Wine-making in process

AND with the lovely cheeseboard came a free glass of
own choice Giffords!

A bottle of Bacchus,  one of the two
original wines

A bottle of Giffords' fizz!!

Sparkling Suffolk rose, Vegan wine
Think this was my free glass with the cheese
Possibly, cream of the crop!

The Many Lives of Lee Miller

Lee Miller with parents and brothers
Poughkeepsie 1914

Lee Miller, model

Just seen the newly-released film on Lee Miller, that most interesting and important twentieth century icon whose son, Anthony Penrose I met when I booked him to come to talk to Wye Arts Association [Kent] years ago. At that meeting he gave me his wonderful book on Lee and I began to appreciate further that she was so much more than a beautiful blonde model discovered by Conde Nast. As a young woman in New York, through Conde Nast, she achieved the accolade of an early

Lee modelling for Vogue cover in Art Deco style
15th March 1927

appearance on the cover of the March 15th 1927 Vogue (the first of many) which lead to her considerable popularity as a model with the fashionable photographers of the day and indirectly, to her decision to live in Paris for a time, a city she had loved and experienced as a student with a family friend in her late teens. As well as modelling, Lee also increased the volume of her photography in New York before eventually departing for Paris and the beau monde. There, in the early Thirties, she slept her way around the artistic milieu and became the lover and protege of Surrealist photographer, Man Ray. With him, she invented the solarization *** technique in photography; explored the photography and art she had loved as a child, and further developed her own Surrealist photographic/artistic eye. In short, Lee matured into an excellent photographer while leading a hedonistic life steeped in the artistic, creative Parisian world where her extraordinary almost perfect blonde good looks attracted the male gaze in abundance.

Roland Penrose with Picasso 

She had two marriages; one to Aziz Eloui Bey, an Egyptian nearly twenty years her senior, who arrived by chance in St Moritz when Lee was there. Despite her then current relationship with Man Ray, the two were quickly infatuated with each other and Aziz left his wife, Nimet. Her second marriage was to Surrealist artist, Roland Penrose with whom she remained for the rest of her life and with whom she had her son, Anthony.

Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub 1945
Hitler and wife Eva Braun had 
committed suicide but Germany had
not yet surrendered.

Lee Miller photo of Dachau barracks 1945

During WW2, [1939-1945] she became a famous U.S. war correspondent for Vogue, covering the siege of St Malo; the liberation of Paris; spending time in more than one of the concentration camps importantly including Dachau which she entered the morning after its liberation and which produced a large range of photographs which ‘shook the world’. She witnessed many, many of the shattering horrors of the camps and these distressing images, in addition to the long-term psychological damage of a rape by a family member on leave from the Marines, when she was seven, from which she contracted gonorrhea, Lee became deeply affected by PTSD and eventually, a depressive alcoholic. Anthony Penrose remembers the excessive alcohol and the PTSD, during the first 25 years of his life, until his relations with his mother broke down totally, and he left to travel, staying away for three years and returning only after his marriage. His wife subsequently engineered a reconciliation between them two years before Lee's death in 1977. 

S.S. Guard in canal. Dachau. Lee Miller 1945  

However, in his compelling book, The Lives of Lee Miller, Penrose introduces the reader to the myriad facets of an amazing life in which Lee was inclined to divide off feelings and relationships into inner compartments which never interacted at all. She became a noted cook, throwing herself into preparing food, experiencing culinary possibilities and inventing dishes and combinations with artistry and enthusiasm. Along the way she also became a gourmet, sometimes difficult to entertain but always an enthusiastic guest and hostess. 
.As she aged, her beautiful looks deteriorated and she had weight problems all of which added to her propensity for depression.

Anthony Penrose spent years after his mother’s death from cancer in 1977, on working through her extensive photographic archives, (most of which was unknown to him) unearthing a rich array of her work on such artists [and friends] as Braque, Picasso, Eluard, Miro and Ernst plus many additional contemporary photographs included in his vivid biography which also provides much of contemporary current affairs as context.  Predominantly however, his book unearths the several lives of his mother, Lee Miller, and describes the many talents of this unusually gifted and iconic artist, photographer, Surrealist muse and Vogue war correspondent. 

Lee with son Anthony Penrose, born March 1947.
Lee's maternal instincts were scant and his nurse,
Annie Clements, became his adored mother substitute

..

Lee Miller, war correspondent

By Anthony Penrose
Recommended!

****

Solarization

Lee Miller Solarization

Solarization can refer to a technique used in photography that involves exposing a partially developed photograph to light before continuing processing. This can reverse some of the tones in a negative or print, and introduce pronounced outlines of highlights.

Sneezum's Finale?

 

No research done on the date of the
acquisition of the family crest.
But it IS impressive.

Sneezum's Corner, Fore Street, Ipswich 1900

New to Bury St Edmunds in 2022, I was charmed to stumble across a very large shop in the middle of town, named, Sneezum’s, I silently considered the name must be one of those quaint Suffolkian words with rural roots in the long ago. This week I went into the shop in search of a watch battery and discovered, as I did so, that the shop, on two floors and occupying a large area selling a wide range of goods from jewellery to well, almost anything, was closing. A query elicited the news that the owners were retiring and that a Sneezum's had graced the town centre in various streets since 1874! The longevity of one family owning shops in one small town for a century and a half, is impressive but even more wonderful was the name which I decided must be much older than one hundred and fifty years. And so I have wandered among fables of early mediaeval naming based on the ways ordinary people lived. It is about modest citizens, their humble social customs, and their astonishingly lengthy effects on English social and linguistic development.

The Domesday Book and its creator

Yet again, the Domesday Book, 1086, effectively the first census in the country, is hugely important, its name, Domesday, indicating that William (the Conqueror) intended that those holders registered would hold the land until the end of time. Before the coming of the Normans in 1066, individuals were known in their small villages by their first, and only, names, or possibly by their nicknames. 

Mediaeval arrowsmith or fletcher,
both subsequent surnames

Very gradually, the 

population grew; people moved beyond villages and small towns, and more than the one name to distinguish one man from another, became essential. This social movement was slowly developing before the Normans invaded and within two years after the Norman conquest, the demands of the Domesday Book speeded up the process and it became imperative for each person to have a second name, with fines of property and belongings to enforce the law, involved. People had to supply an individual second name and many simply chose what was familiar to them; which family they belonged to; where they lived; what they did; personal characteristics or achievements. SO the first surnames as such in England were ‘John, son of Thomas’; ‘Peter the baker’. As time went on, these identifying second names were slightly shortened and surnames began to emerge, such as Peter Baker; John Thompson. The most common surname actually became Smith from the highly visible occupational names such as Blacksmith although some ‘Smith’ names remained entire as in my mother’s maiden name of Arrowsmith.

David Beckham whose mediaeval
forebears must have hailed from
the Norfolk village!

There were other forms of surnames based on

West Beckham
 village sign

a) Location of birth, e.g. Beckham in Norfolk.

b) Personal characteristics, e.g. Brown from brown hair; Black from black hair; Redhead from red hair; White from pale complexion. Others were statements of the obvious:  Fairchild; Armstrong;  Goodbody.

c) Patronage, e.g. Hickman from Hick’s man.

d) Estate, e.g. Windsor; Cavendish.

Many surnames related to the male lineage and family roots. The surname of Adkins means Adam’s family and names ending with ‘cock’ usually indicate ‘son of’. Adcock is Adam’s son; Alcock is Allen’s son. The word ‘cock’ is an Old English ‘tap’ and to have a son was of the utmost importance in Anglo-Saxon society; thus, when a baby was born, everyone quickly looked to see it it had ‘a little tap’ to check if it was a  boy.

The oldest recorded English surname is 'Hatt'; it is from East Anglia and indicates a hat-maker

Mediaeval hat-maker

In Bury, in the mediaeval grid, there is a Hatter Street. Hatt was an Anglo-Saxon family surname, mentioned in a Norman transcript and identified as a regular name throughout the region. Over subsequent centuries, surnames were registered in a variety of official documents such as the Hundred Rolls, the Assize Courts, land transactions, Royal Charters and so on. But it was the ever-inventive Normans who brought over the idea of hereditary surnames through their hereditary tax system which rewarded those who made wills indicating the family’s intentions regarding land and other possessions. Although not legally required, it paid the Anglo-Saxons to will anything they owned to their offspring otherwise, the government was entitled by law, to snatch most of it. And so this process focussed on the necessity of hereditary surnames. Two centuries later, the poll tax, first levied in 1275 and continuing under different names until the 17th century, taxed people a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods. The sweep of history continued its demands!

Rose and Crown, Snettisham

But, to return to the splendidly-named Sneezums. The place name Sneezum comes from a local pronunciation of Snettisham in Norfolk. Recorded as Snetesham in 1086, probably deriving from an Old English personal name, ‘belonging to ‘Sneti’ or ‘Snaetes’ with the addition of ‘ham’, Old English ‘village homestead’. The name translates literally as ‘Snipe’s Farm’ from the Old English ‘snite ham’ and almost certainly is a reference to an area where snipe abounded. The first recorded spelling of the family name is that of Richard de Snetesham, dated 1161, in the pipe rolls of the county of Norfolk during the reign of Henry 11, 1154-1189. Various spellings of the name Snettisham, Stnetsham, Sneezum, Sneezam, Snesham, Sneitisham, Snetsham and Sneegum, are scattered through different manuscripts and documents, with instances of two different versions in the one script! In fact the surname is descended from the tenant of the lands of Snettisham, William de Warrene who was under-tenant to the Bishop of Bayeux, all recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.This large and important village contained 7 mills, 3 fisheries and 440 sheep.

Curiously, although this is one of the earliest surnames recorded, there is little mention in official documents of Sneezum or its equivalents, with a notable scarcity in Norfolk, between the 12^th and 18^th centuries although we do have a John Sneezham recorded at Castle Hedingham Independent Church in Essex as patriarch of a large family and his son, Jos Sneezam, as having married Emma Staples at Mundon in Essex on December 18^th 1830 with grandson, Jos Sneezam, being christened a year later. Between 1861 and 1891, the Sneezum family name was found in both England and Scotland and by 1891, Suffolk had 23 Sneezum families which was roughly 42% of all Sneezums recorded in the UK at that time.

As this little research was prompted by news of the intended closure of Sneezum's in Bury, we  must

Sneezums, Bury St Edmunds

 mention the relatively modern family references too. The Sneezums ran pawnbroker shops in Ipswich for over a century from the 19th to the 20th. In 1925 there were four members of the family working in Ipswich as pawnbrokers at different sites: Arthur in Norwich Road; Raymond in Elm Street; William at 14-20 Fore Street and Henry at 89-91 Fore Street. Below are three paintings of Sneezum premises in Ipswich by William John Leggett (1856-1936) although none of the ‘fine house close to the church of St Mary-at-Quay’ where this well-known Ipswich family lived. Their businesses eventually included jewellery, pawnbroker’s, clothier’s, cameras, sports gear, bicycles and fireworks! By the 1940s, pawnbroking was largely a thing of the past and the Sneezums moved up-market as jewellers and goldsmiths. And it was in the 1950s that Henry and Raymond became dealers in cameras, photographic equipment, sports outfitters and dealers in tools and musical instruments.

Fore Street, Ipswich
Painting of a Sneezum's branch in Ipswich by
William John Leggett. 1856-1936

A Second Sneezum's in Ipswich by Leggett

A third Leggett painting of another Sneezum's store
in Ipswich

Post Script
To underline the 'sweep of history' proposition, this is a 
photo of the Poll Tax riots in 1990 in protest against
the unfair imposition by Maggie Thatcher.