Category: Iotd

The Bingham Library

The new library in Dyer Street had a meeting room with seating for 200 people, but it quickly became clear that a larger meeting place was needed. And this is one of the reasons that Bingham decided to fund the Bingham Hall.

The Bingham Library

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Image of the day – 193

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every week or so.

Bingham Library

Cirencester’s Bingham Library building is now the Town Council Offices and the Tourist Information Centre. When I was a pupil at Cirencester Grammar School in Victoria Road, this grand old building was still the town’s main library. I remember walking to it from the family home at 37 Victoria Road, often to return books and take out different ones on science fiction, astronomy, or whatever interested me at the time; sometimes to visit the reference library to read articles from Encyclopaedia Britannica and make notes for Geography essays on coffee, rice or tea production in exotic places.

Daniel George Bingham

Blue plaque (click to enlarge)

The Bingham Hall in King Street as well as the Bingham Library in Dyer Street were built as town amenities and improvements by Daniel George Bingham. For more details of his life and career, click the blue plaque on the right.

Bingham worked in railway management, first at Cirencester, later at Paddington in London, and finally in Utrecht in the Netherlands where he became wealthy. He visited Cirencester briefly but quite regularly and spent part of his wealth providing the library in 1905 and the Hall in 1908. He and his wife Jane had friends and family in Utrecht so they were always keen to remain living there, though clearly Bingham retained a fondness for his town of birth – Cirencester.

From the beginning, the new library in Dyer Street had a meeting room with seating for 200 people, but it quickly became clear that a larger meeting place was needed. And this is one of the reasons that Bingham decided to fund the Bingham Hall to provide expanded facilities for meetings, dinners, theatre, music, and even a rifle range. I remember being in the Army Cadets in the sixth form at the Grammar School and taking part in target practice with .22 calibre rifles in the Bingham Hall rifle range. Morning assemblies were held in the main hall at the Bingham Hall, also school theatrical productions and musical performances.

What about us?

Few of us will ever have enough money to contribute something major like Bingham did. But most of us can afford to buy a little extra food and put it into the Food Bank receptacle as we leave the supermarket. Or we can join a local organisation helping others in some way, or keeping the local environment tidy. We all have the capability to improve our fellow citizens’ well-being in some way, it may cost no more than a little thought and a simple action.

So why not join in? Bingham did. We all can!

See also:

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You might also like:

Cirencester Hospital
A grand old house in Cirencester
Cirencester Abbey
Guests and another move

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A recommended site

In first-century Jewish society, a woman approaching a rabbi — in public, uninvited, without the mediation of a husband or male relative — was itself an act that would raise eyebrows and clench jaws.

Chris Dryden’s website

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On the web – 1

CD’s website

Sometimes I read something so good that I want to share it with my readers. This happened recently with one of Christoper Dryden’s posts. When I asked if I might republish it here, he very generously agreed. But I’m having second thoughts. Not about sharing it, but about sharing it in full. I think it will be better to share enough that my readers will want to go and read the rest on CD’s blog.

The extract

Reading: Mark 5:21-43

Context: What social barriers does the bleeding woman overcome to reach Jesus, and why is this significant?

This scripture does not indicate the social barrier, but we can infer the following: she has a disease, which doesn’t make her socially acceptable for starters. The nature of the disease, apparently, would make her unclean, so she shouldn’t be seen in public. Touching the garment of Jesus would be considered scandalous and outrageous cos the belief was that those touched by the unclean would be unclean themselves. She’s a social outcast, and she should know her place and deal with the fact that she’s worse off for looking to get her problem sorted, only for it not to work out. She’s a woman, that also ain’t becoming of someone who wishes to approach this guy. Seen in that light, the amount she’s overcome to reach out speaks volumes about the level of faith she has that one touch could make all the difference. It explains Jesus’ own commentary on the situation, namely that her faith has made her whole. And as I reflect on that, there’s the nudge to consider what level of faith can be exercised to trust Jesus. And also, there’s a challenge of how we can demonstrate and declare, for the benefit of other social outcasts, that their issues can be solved by reaching out to touch Jesus, who is near them?

In first-century Jewish society, a woman approaching a rabbi — in public, uninvited, without the mediation of a husband or male relative — was itself an act that would raise eyebrows and clench jaws. Layer on top of that the twelve years of haemorrhaging, which under the Levitical code rendered her perpetually ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:25-27), and you start to appreciate what she was carrying before she ever took a single step toward Jesus. It wasn’t just a physical condition. It was a sentence. Twelve years of isolation. Twelve years of being untouchable. Twelve years of being told, in effect, that she didn’t qualify.

She had also spent everything she had on physicians who left her worse off, not better. So not only is she socially marginalised, she is financially spent and medically hopeless. She has nothing left to lose. And that, right there, might be the very thing that unlocks her faith. When you’ve exhausted every other option, the audacity to reach for Jesus becomes a lot less surprising.

Seen in that light, the amount she’s overcome to reach out speaks volumes about the faith she has that a single touch could make all the difference. It explains Jesus’ own commentary on the situation: her faith has made her whole. And as I reflect on that, there’s a nudge to consider what level of faith is required to trust Jesus. And also, there’s a challenge of how we can demonstrate and declare, for the benefit of other social outcasts, that their issues can be solved by reaching out to touch Jesus, who is near them?

Someone might feel like they don’t qualify. They feel like they’ve been told — by circumstance, by history, by the voice in their own head — that the door to Jesus isn’t for them. This woman’s story is a loud and clear rebuttal of that lie. She reached, He responded, and the power that went out of Him was not accidental. He knew. He always knows. And He is never contaminated by what comes to Him, broken and desperate. He is only ever transformative.

Content: How does Jesus treat both the synagogue leader and the unclean woman with equal dignity?

What a fascinating word – dignity. Let’s get ourselves a running definition or walking, if we prefer the strolling approach.  Dignity is about worth, value and honour. To treat people with dignity is to confer on them a sense that they are of worth and value and should be duly honoured…

Reading more

My hope is that you’ll want to read the whole thing. Don’t miss the opportunity, you will not regret it! And if you like Dryden’s writing as much as I do, you’ll bookmark his site and keep coming back for more.

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Another great post
Understand and explain
Life, death, resurrection

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Life always wins out

All forms of life are precious and we depend on many of them to provide food, purify water, generate the oxygen we need to breathe, clean away life forms that have died, and much, much more.

Fallen tree, climbing ivy

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Image of the day – 192

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Fallen tree, climbing ivy

This old tree trunk, clearly felled by chainsaw, is being colonised by ivy. Once the tree stood tall and strong and it’s likely that ivy clung to its trunk and branches. Now the tree lies on the ground, entirely dead, but ivy still uses the trunk as a support to grow upwards to continue to reach the light.

No giving up

Life is not in the habit of giving up, generations come and go, no individual tree, person, or anything else lasts for ever, not even a species. But life itself adapts, changes, and takes advantage of what went before. There has been life on planet Earth for around four billion years, that’s only 500 million years after the planet itself was formed. And it’s developed enormously in variety and complexity since chemistry first gave rise to biology.

We’re still filling in the gaps in what we know, but our knowledge is expanding and the gaps are shrinking. What we do know is that living things are very good at taking advantage of circumstances. That’s what the ivy is doing on the dead tree trunk. The need for sunlight is critically important for plants as the energy from that light allows them to build sugars from water and carbon dioxide. A stock of sugars enables them to survive the nights where the sun is absent, and survive the long, dark, cold, winter months as well.

All forms of life are precious and we depend on many of them to provide food, purify water, generate the oxygen we need to breathe, clean away life forms that have died, and much, much more.

Animals of all kinds and sizes ultimately depend on the sugars made by plants. Many animals feed on plants, stealing their sugars in a variety of forms, some feed on other animals, stealing sugars in secondhand forms; some, like us humans, eat both plants and animals. But almost all life depends ultimately on sunlight for its supply of energy.

That same great source of light also informs us, lets us see. Without light, eyes would be of no value whatsoever. Without light we would all be profoundly blind.

Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world’. What does he mean by that? Is he saying that he is a light without which we’d be profoundly blind?

I think that’s exactly what he’s saying. Light is essential for vision and vital energy. The sun enables physical vision and energy. Jesus provides another kind of vision and energy. Search it out! It’s not too hard to find.

See also:

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You might also like:

Life, death, resurrection
Early steps towards life
Umbellifers

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Cirencester at night

We are looking more or less along what was once a Roman street in old Corinium. Although it winds left and right here and there, nearly 2000 years ago it would have run almost entirely straight.

Jupiter and the church tower

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Image of the day – 191

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Jupiter and the church tower

The town’s streetlights illuminate the lovely old architecture in Dollar Street, and Jupiter is bright enough to see high above the church tower’s flag pole. Click the thumbnail to enlarge it and you’ll also see a star a little further to the right, almost over the open window. This is Saiph, the bottom-left star of Orion. If you’re looking at the sky from the southern hemisphere Saiph will be Orion’s top-right star and Jupiter will be very low in the sky.

Looking south

We are looking more or less along what was once a Roman street in old Corinium. Although it winds left and right here and there, nearly 2000 years ago it would have run almost entirely straight, part of the Roman military road between Glevum (Gloucester) and Calleva (Silchester) through the local Iron Age kingdom of the Dobunni whose capital was about four miles to the north of Corinium in what is now the village of Bagendon. Behind you, in this view, the road continued north-west to Glevum where there was a military fortress. Some British tribes were allies of the Romans, including the local Dobunni. Some tribes opposed the Romans and their conquest of these islands. In the south-east direction the same Roman road (Ermin Way) passed through the town’s Forum, past the Basilica and made its way to Calleva to the south and east.

See also:

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Mosaics underfoot
Image of the day – 64
Image of the day – 46
A view of ancient remains

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

A large bookshop

The basement, shown in the photo, is known as The Norrington Room and has five kilometres of bookshelves in it, containing 200 000 books.

The Norrington Room

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Image of the day – 190

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

The Norrington Room
(Click to enlarge)

The photo shows the basement of Blackwell’s Bookshop in the centre of Oxford, the famous university town in the UK.

Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford is huge

You can get a good idea of size from the photo, there are four or five floors above the basement, large but not as open; the upper floors are smaller and have no long views like this one as the line of sight is broken up by countless units of shelving.

Map centred on Blackwell’s

This was where the original Blackwell’s bookshop was, but it has grown larger and larger over the years. The basement, shown in the photo, is known as The Norrington Room and has five kilometres of bookshelves in it, containing 200 000 books. Blackwell’s in Oxford also hosts a Caffè Nero on the first floor. The map (opens in a new tab, click to resize and drag it) is centred on the bookshop in the very heart of Oxford.

Some history

The current bookshop in Broad Street opened in 1879, though it was much smaller in those days, at a mere 4 m square. The first bookshelf unit is still in use, at the top of the stairs to the first floor. The shop soon expanded, incorporating the cellar and the first floor as well as several adjacent shops. There was an earlier Blackwell’s bookshop, also in Oxford, that opened in 1846.

Blackwell’s had an online presence from 1995, selling books worldwide. It also opened retail outlets in many other cities and towns across the UK. As a company it remained independent until the business was bought in 2022 by Waterstones, another major British book retailer.

See also:

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Castle Street
What does Jesus mean to me and how do I respond to him?

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!