What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
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At the top of the image you can see the rears of buildings on Cecily Hill in Cirencester. Their gardens contain the trunks and foliage of mature trees just beyond the wall. The wall separates those gardens from the water channel and may have been built specifically for that purpose. Some of the tree branches have grown across the top of the wall.
Near the base of the wall is a distinct line, brown below and much paler above. I think the brown part of the wall is often underwater. The water flow is strongly seasonal, high in wintertime and much, much lower in the summer. The River Churn divides at the Gloucester Road bridge, only a kilometre from this point. The major branch follows the outside of the Roman city wall and usually continues to flow all year round. But the branch in the photo is fed from the outflow of the long, narrow, supply pound for Barton Mill and this in turn is fed from the main flow of the River Churn. The water flows in the town are complex, this section is often known as Gumstool Brook, but it might also be regarded as a diverted part of the Churn.
The pipework at the bottom of this wall was there in the 1950s and 60s when I was a child. Most of it was hidden then by a low wall topped with flagstones, but today much of the structure has fallen away exposing the glazed pipes. Out of the photo a little further to the left, the water disappears underground, running south of Coxwell Street and reappearing at the surface further west in the Abbey Grounds.
It’s good to know that the Town Council and the Friends of Gumstool Brook are looking into ways of improving the flow of this watercourse by adjusting the sluice management rules. We might see the water flowing properly all summer in 2026.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
This lovely old aeroplane is a Sopwith Pup, as used by the Royal Flying Corp during the First World War. Sopwith was a major British aircraft manufacturer of the day. This aircraft is still flying from time to time in England where it’s based at Old Warden Airfield, itself a survivor of the First World War. This particular aircraft was built after the war and modified back to the fighter configuration.
In the photo the engine is being tested after maintenance, so a couple of side panels have been removed for inspection. The propeller was spinning, you can see the motion blur in the image.
Here’s the same aircraft in action.
Design and construction
Based on a smaller, earlier aircraft, Sopwith designed the larger Pup as a fighter in 1915 with the first prototype appearing in 1916. Both the navy and the army (the Royal Flying Corp was part of the army) ordered numbers of the planes and they served well until superseded and transferred for training purposes as newer, more effective fighting planes rapidly evolved.
This aircraft was much lighter than its German counterparts. It could take off and land on grass surfaces, in quite short distances. The Pup was very manoeuvrable, had a tight turning circle, and a high service ceiling for those times.
The Pups were replaced with Sopwith Camels during 1917.
Old Warden Aerodrome
Old Warden was a First World War air station, as already mentioned. It lies just north of Shefford and south-east of Bedford. Today it’s the home of the Shuttleworth collection of old aircraft and motor vehicles, a very fine and famous collection with a long history, originally as a private collection, but now open to the public. The old aircraft are frequently rolled out, and often one or more are performing in the air.
Everything that’s not active on a particular day is stored in a series of First World War hangers and those are all open to visit as a museum with informative explanatory material on display as well. There is active maintenance and restoration going on, and some of that may be on display too.
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, and are in the area, I highly recommend popping over for a visit.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
What’s in an image? And indeed what’s in a field? Let’s take it a stage at a time.
The Abbey
The grass in the foreground is part of one of Cirencester’s public parks, the Abbey Grounds. As the name suggests, this is part of the medieval abbey; the abbey buildings and the great abbey church are out of sight behind you in this view. All of those abbey remains are invisible, remaining as only foundations. After the dissolution of the abbeys by Henry VIII, the stonework was pulled down and re-used as building material as the town developed.
You are looking north-east. The first thing you can see beyond the grassed area is a stretch of water. This was dug by the monks to widen and deepen a branch of the River Churn to form a lake to supply fish. You will need to expand the image to see it clearly, it’s marked by benches, life buoys and low vegetation. The two figures in the extreme right are a good guide, they are just our side of the lake.
Abbey House
Also behind us in this view stood Abbey House, demolished in the 1960s. The Abbey land was later owned by the Chester-Master family who built the house, and the park was their private garden. There is one remaining structure from that time in the photo; the large mound at the extreme right covers the ice house built and used by the Chester-Masters.
The Romans
Cirencester is the site of Britain’s second city in Roman times – Corinium, or to give it its full name, Corinium Dobunnorum. The row of trees beyond the lake is close to the Roman city wall. Roman stone was also robbed to build structures in the later town, but out of site to the right of the ice house is a substantial bank and underlying that, the remaining Roman masonry. Some of it has been excavated and remains visible today. If you are visiting the town it’s well worth a look.
While we’re thinking of the Romans, the Abbey Grounds lie entirely within the Roman city and there’s almost certainly more to be discovered here. Just beyond the row of trees mentioned above is another branch of the River Churn. This, and the city wall would together have formed a barrier sufficient to force all traffic in and out of the city through the five large city gates.
Tar Barrow Field
The rising land beyond the line of trees up to the woodland along the sky line is known locally as Tar Barrow Field. ‘Tar’ is probably a corruption of ‘Thor’. The barrows would have been Neolithic or possibly Saxon, but the Medieval inhabitants clearly thought the Norse god Thor was involved in some way. There was also a Roman temple in this field and that would have been reached by a road or footpath from the Roman gate over what is today London Road.
Take a look yourself
If you are visiting Cirencester and interested in the town’s background and history, consider visiting the Corinium Museum (linked below). In addition to checking out the museum itself, you can pick up leaflets about historical sites to visit around the town.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
Click to enlarge
For some time I’ve been walking sections of the Cotswold Canals as and when I have an opportunity and the inclination. Yesterday I walked a section that included the famous Sapperton Tunnel.
Tunnel construction started in 1784 by digging vertical shafts down from the hilltop at intervals along the line of the future canal, and then tunnelling in both directions towards adjacent shafts, hopefully meeting halfway and repeating the process until the tunnel was completed in 1789.
The photo shows where one of these twenty-five vertical shafts was cut. The spoil from digging was scattered all around and no attempt was made to cart it away; and that accounts for the mound. And as it was not possible to cultivate the mound, trees have grown over the years. So the wooded mounds are now very visible features of the landscape.
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July 2024 (6 months before publishing this article)
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Here’s a touch of July during chilly January! Last year we decided to buy a greenhouse for overwintering house plants, growing cuttings, and extending the season for things like tomatoes. The kit of parts arrived some time ago, and finally it was being installed on the base prepared earlier.
We were in Yorkshire on 1st, stayed with Debbie and Steve for the night, visited Beth and Paz on 2nd, and then drove home in the afternoon.
Later in the month I made good progress scanning old photos; this is a great memory jogger, helping me piece together some of my life and that of those around me. There’s nothing better than documentary information, whether that’s photographic, video, sound, or in written form. Some of the results appear in these Blast from the past posts.
The image shows an original transparency alongside the scanned version. The colour match looks pretty good.
We had some crisp, frosty conditions during January that made the countryside look really beautiful.
Towards the end of the month I discovered some reddish bumps on my left shoulder, mostly at the front with a few at the back. I had various thoughts about what it might be, and in the end found out it was shingles. I had no discomfort or pain, just the rash, and the GP prescribed a course of antivirals and antihistamine.
It was strange to think that the virus had been inactive in some nerve cells since I was a child!
I visited my friend Stephen in Gloucester Hospital, and he seemed in good spirits and to be doing well, he was looking forward to getting back home as soon as possible after his surgery.
I managed to get some video of our cat, Erin, chasing her tail. Cats and dogs both do this sometimes, especially when they are young. And I was trying different methods of making still images from my old VHS videos that I had on my laptop as ISO images. The VLC media player seemed the way to go and I was pleased with some of the results I was getting.
I was tracking the progress of several space missions; Dawn was closing in on the minor planet Ceres in the Asteroid Belt, while New Horizons was beginning the science phase of its mission to Pluto and Charon, and there was hope that the Philae Lander would soon wake up.
I had a new driving licence through the post from DVLA. Unlike my current licence, this one proudly displayed the EU emblem in the upper left. Like almost half the voters in the referendum, I voted to remain in the EU. Leaving was a terrible mistake.
The demolition of the building where I first worked on joining Unilever was almost complete. And the very last piece still standing contained the ground-floor corner window where my desk had been! It seemed strange to see the old Knowledge Systems Group office (KSG) vanish! By the end of January there was nothing left.
Office still life
The photo (right) shows items on my desk on 24th, including a mug of tea, a Conference pear, my Samsung Steel phone, notebook, roller pen – and a piece of the old building rescued from the cleared site!
I was busy with some decorating in the hall, stairs and landing of our house in St Neots, there were cracks that became very wide when I scraped out the loose plaster, so those had to be filled and sanded down before I could begin to apply paint. But by the end of the month things were looking a lot better and we preferred the new colour to the pale yellow we had used before.
Unilever was restructuring the computing departments within research and this affected the Web Team where I was working. It seemed we would survive as a group, and with a similar remit, but within a very different organisational structure and changed leadership. We were in the process of understanding how we’d be affected going forward.
On Sunday 23rd I flew to Boston with my boss, Pete Keeley. We were picked up from home by a Unilever car and driven to Heathrow for a business class flight, then from the airport by cab to our rooms in the Boston Park Plaza. We were attending a Sun Microsystems conference on their Java Development Tools and the various uses for Java. There was a heavy snowfall while we were in Boston and we tried walking through it to explore the city before flying home; that was quite an experience!
At home, I walked some of the nearby streets and footpaths around the old A1 at Crosshall on the edge of St Neots. Although I’d got my bearings pretty much for the main streets in the town, some of the smaller footpaths were still new to me.
Judy had recovered well from surgery and an issue with chemotherapy for her bowel cancer and returned to work at Cotham Grammar School teaching biology. She very much wanted to teach until June to see her students through their exams. Debbie, Beth and I supported her as best we could, but teaching is a tough, stressful, tiring career and I think we all wondered if it might be too much. Nevertheless, she got off to a great start with her usual determination.
World events: Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union; and Valeri Polyakov completed a year aboard the Mir space station, a duration record.
I began designing the LARS System configuration for the PCs at work. It would be beneficial to have all the research station’s machines set up the same way so staff would have a familiar environment wherever they were working.
Judy ordered some double-glazed windows to replace the worst of the house’s original decaying wooden window frames. This was a much needed improvement.
A severe storm caused damage to trees and buildings overnight on 25th January at the Research Station. Trees fell or had branches torn off and roofs were damaged.
World events: Commercial customers first had access to the internet in the USA and the Netherlands; and the Morris Worm caused issues on Unix computers.
I was the Computer Representative for the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station. This involved liaising between the Computing Group at Rothamsted and the research staff at LARS. Desktop personal computers were just beginning to appear, but computing at Long Ashton depended on the Research Council’s VAX/VMS systems.
Judy was teaching Biology at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol. Debbie was nine-years-old and Beth was six, they were collected from school every day by a friend and then Judy picked them up on her way home.
World events: The Internet’s Domain Name System was created; and Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second term as US President.
One of our research papers appeared in January, based on work done in 1978, here are the details:
Williams RR, Arnold GM, Flook VA, Jefferies CJ. The effect of picking date on blossoming and fruit set in the following year for the apple cv Bramley’s Seedling. Journal of Horticultural Science. 1980 Jan 1;55(4):359-62.
I enjoyed the scientific work while it lasted. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Research Station was to close 23 years later and is now a housing estate.
World events:GPS time began on 6th January; and Andrei Sakharov was arrested in Moscow.
During this period I had gathered and processed information for my master’s thesis on plum flower and fruit development. The experimental work was complete, a lot of photographic processing was behind me and I had just had copies of the thesis bound and submitted in December. Now it was a matter of waiting for the viva and a decision by Bristol University.
Judy was expecting a baby in March and she had made a basketwork cane crib as well as knitting various baby clothes – all in non-committal yellow and white as we had no idea whether to expect a boy or a girl.
World events: Guilty verdicts were returned over Watergate; and work on the Channel Tunnel was abandoned.
My final year project at Bath University was an experiment in propagation of Bergenia, and I needed to go in over the holidays to take measurements. After New Year, but before our new terms began, Judy was able to come to Bath with me on one of these occasions.
I began my second term in the lower sixth at Cirencester Grammar School, studying chemistry, biology and physics and additional maths.
I was finding A Level Chemistry tougher than I’d expected. It was one of my favourite subjects at O Level when everything had seemed very logical and precise, but organic chemistry was new and seemed more flexible and varied. Physics was OK, but getting more mathematical, and biology was completely new as I had not been able to do all three at O Level.
In January it was back to school for my second term in the First Form at Cirencester Grammar School. We were all properly in our stride by now while my sister, Cindy was in her fourth year at Querns School, and Ruth and Rachael were at home with Mummy, not at school at all yet. I was eleven-years-old, Cindy was eight, Ruth four, and Rachael three.
The page from my maths exercise book suggests I was pretty good at adding decimals!
World events: Construction of the Aswan Dam began in Egypt; and Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descended almost 11 km into the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
I was six and in my second year at Querns School, starting the second term.
Daddy worked at Watermoor Nursery as the foreman assisted by Miss Brown. They took cuttings, split larger herbaceous plants, and kept the rows hoed and watered. They would have had extra help at busy times. The recipe for John Innes compost would have been used by them around this time.
World events:USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine began sea trials; and the Soviet Union announced the end of the war between the USSR and Germany.
I was eighteen-months-old at the end of January, walking and talking no doubt. We must have been getting settled in our new council house, 17 Queen Anne’s Road on the Beeches Estate. I imagine we had mostly second-hand furniture or cheap utility items.
This is the cover of a seed catalogue of the period, rescued I believe by my father from the office of my Uncle, R W Jefferies after his death. He was in charge of the seed department and had great stacks of documents on his desk, recent items on top and older material buried further down. It all had to be cleared, of course, but Dad and his brother Bob kept some of the more interesting items.
Mum and Dad wrote often to one another, a phone call was possible, but didn’t always go through, was difficult, and not very private.
On radar, Dad mentions tracking a group of 5 V1 cruise missiles (‘Buzz Bombs’) on 3rd January, and a group of more than two hundred German aircraft on 16th. He heard on 17th that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians.
On Wednesday 24th he travelled to Cirencester by train on leave, returning on duty in early February.
World events: The Soviet Union began the East Prussian Offensive, to eliminate German forces there; and Adolf Hitler made his last public speech on radio.
Mike (aka ‘Tigger’ and later my Dad) was thirteen-years-old and starting a new term at either Cirencester Grammar School, or Rendcomb College. Lilias (later my Mum) would have been eleven, living in Coagh, County Tyrone with her mother Selina and little sister, Annabelle (about two). Lilias would also have have been starting a new school term, in her case at the village school.
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The tree was topped, the branches trimmed off, and [the sculptor] was asked to work on the standing trunk in situ. He rose to this challenge and came up trumps, the photo shows some of the detail.
Image 124 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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We have a skilled sculptor in Cirencester who specialises in carving large pieces of timber. He was called in work on a tree that had died in Cirencester Park. But instead of felling the tree and then asking him to work on the horizontal trunk (something he’s done to great effect in the past), this time the tree was topped, the branches trimmed off, and he was asked to work on the standing trunk in situ. He rose to this challenge and came up trumps, the photo shows some of the detail.
I never cease to be astonished at the way an artist can imagine a finished work before it exists and bring it to life in any medium – oil paint, watercolour, wood, stone. It’s a kind of magic. The human brain is so creative. People have been doing this kind of thing for many generations; think of Michelangelo, or the stone and bronze artists of Greece and Rome. No animal is capable of converting material into an image like this, or even imagining that such a thing is possible.
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Such beautiful, peaceful scenery. Trees upon trees, fields upon fields, mountain upon mountains – and yes, houses, farms, villages. What a lovely place to live!
Image 123 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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At the beginning of August, on our way north for our family holiday, we went for a walk at Slieve Gullion Forest Park, and I took this photo. Such beautiful, peaceful scenery. Trees upon trees, fields upon fields, mountain upon mountains – and yes, houses, farms, villages. What a lovely place to live!
We also drove round the ring of Gullion, and that was another amazing experience. A long climb up a narrow road glorious views from the parking spots, and no problems passing other vehicles as it’s a one-way system. It would also make a fine, long walk if you have enough time.
When: 1st August 2024 Where: Belfast, Northern Ireland
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The Titanic Experience begins even before you reach the ticket office. The building itself is shaped as if the bow of the ship is bearing down on you, and immediately inside we were surrounded by steel structures.
Image 122 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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While we were on holiday, we visited the Titanic museum in Belfast. It really was an amazing exhibition, very well designed and executed. There were several immersive video experiences, using a real set but with virtual, projected characters in period costume having conversations that were informative and compelling. In the photo, a lady, first-class passenger is talking with one of the cabin staff.
The Titanic Experience begins even before you reach the ticket office. The building itself is shaped as if the bow of the ship is bearing down on you, and immediately inside we were surrounded by steel structures that made us feel as if we were entering a shipbuilding business. The static displays were informative, and the history of Belfast as a shipbuilding city, the work of Harland and Wolf in the early part of the twentieth century, the building of Titanic and her sister ships, the launch, fitting out, sea trials, and the fateful first (and only) voyage, the rescues at sea, and the aftermath were all brought to life.
I can recommend the experience; if you ever get the chance, go and see it.
When: 6th August 2024 Where: Belfast, Northern Ireland
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Image 120 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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Firethorn (botanical name Pyracantha) is a widely-grown garden shrub with small white flowers in the spring and glorious, usually red or orange fruit that often persist into January or later. They are eaten by birds however, and in a hard winter the fruit may all be consumed before Christmas. The fruit are pomes with the same structure as very tiny apples (they make excellent ‘apples’ for the fruit bowl in a dolls house). The flesh is edible but is mealy and bland, the seeds are slightly poisonous though a small number are very unlikely to be harmful.
The example in the photo was growing in Waitrose car park in Cirencester, pretty much on the line of the Roman City wall. As you walk into the car park from Sheep Street, look to your right as you pass the outdoor seating and tables and you’ll spot a low, stone wall. This was built directly above the Roman wall to show where it was and its alignment, there’s a piece of Roman stone on top of it and an explanatory sign, with further historical information on the wall of the supermarket nearby.
The road to Aquae Sulis (Roman Bath) left Corinium through a gateway nearby and later became the old Tetbury Road for a couple of miles. The Roman route continues across what is now Cotswold Airport.
When: 25th October 2023 Where: Sheep Street, Cirencester
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Image 119 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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Castle Street is one of the busy streets in the town centre of Cirencester; it has a good mix of coffee shops, restaurants, clothes shops and so forth. Leading west from the Market Place, it becomes the old main road to Tetbury and Stroud, and eventually to Bristol and Bath. The fine, Palladian facade on the right is currently Lloyds Bank, but was once the private town house of a wealthy merchant.
There’s no castle in Cirencester today, but there was a Norman castle here many years ago (though little is known about it). Some sources suggest that it stood where Cirencester House is today, hidden behind the wall and famous yew hedge on nearby Park Street. But it may have been a little further east on adjacent ground bounded today by Castle Street, Park Street, Black Jack Street and the Market Place.
The castle (if that is not too grand a term) was constructed of timber and probably surrounded by a moat. It may have lasted just 35 years before being destroyed by King Stephen, or it might have been rebuilt in stone and lasted rather longer. Evidence is in short supply.
When: 26th October 2023 Where: Castle Street, Cirencester
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
