On my second day in Hiroshima I bought a slightly more
expensive streetcar-and-ferry pass, and in the morning travelled down tram
route 2 all the way to the terminus, Miyajima-guchi. This was another transport surprise, because
after a dozen stops in street-tramway mode, à
la Leeds or Sheffield circa 1950,
the streetcar turns a corner into a complicated little station and then becomes
a fully-fledged railway, like the Fleetwood tramroad but far longer, with
houses backing on to the track, stations at regular intervals and endless
automatic full-barrier crossings. A
road-sign outside Miyajima-guchi station shows the distance back to Hiroshima
as 23km, but the rail line is actually 16.1km.
The ferry takes about fifteen minutes to cross a stretch of
water to a wonderfully picturesque island, Miyajima,
with the steep, deeply forested mountains that you see in Japanese prints, and
on the foreshore the Itsukushima Shrine,
ostensibly dating back to the twelfth century but apparently last replaced in
1875. Tourists flock to photograph
themselves with their backs to this monument;
schoolchildren are brought in droves to line up for class
photographs. There are sacred deer, in
Shinto belief the messengers of the gods, which are regularly fed by the
tourists, despite notices forbidding it.
The Hiroden public-transport operator, through its
subsidiary Hiroshima Tourism Promoting [Hiroshima
Kankō Kaihatsu] runs a ropeway up the sacred Mount Misen. The upper
terminus is a thirty-minute hike to the actual summit at 1,755 feet but you
can’t have everything: the ropeway takes
out 945 feet of that climb and every little helps.
The island has much else to offer, several temples and a
pagoda, and spectacular displays of blossom in spring and maple leaves in
autumn. I could cheerfully return for a
Japanese holiday on Miyajima, knowing that a day-visit to Hiroshima city is
easily practical.
The gift was enhanced by the fact that John agreed to join
me. No-one knows better how to compile a
Marks & Spencer picnic.
Booking a Ferry Cruise takes persistence: I lost count of how many times I was told, in
an inimitable Scouse accent, that “it’s not on the system yet”.
Persistence pays. I
booked us on a cruise up the canal to Manchester.
I was tipped off that the smart advice was to sail from Seacombe and arrive at the terminal
good and early to bag a decent seat.
John was told the exact opposite, that the boat started from
Pier Head.
My source was correct, and we took a taxi to Seacombe so far
ahead of time that we were treated to complimentary coffee left over from the
commuters’ sailings, so that we were in position to march down the gangway,
like Gracie Fields in Sing As We Go,
and park ourselves on the upper deck, facing forward, with seat, a table and a
window ahead.
We were advised to take a picnic because of the queues for
food at the café-bars on each deck. In
fact, we took it in turns to fetch hot drinks whenever the queue was manageable.
It’s a fascinating experience to sail up the trench that was
dug thirty-six miles up the Mersey valley from Eastham Locks to Salford in the
early 1890s, and even more memorable to meet an ocean-going ship coming the
other way.
Rising through huge locks in a sizeable boat that doesn’t
touch the sides is disconcerting. The
Mersey ferries are around 150 feet long and have a beam forty feet or slightly
more. The widest MSC locks are eighty
feet wide.
One of the enjoyable features of the trip was the way in
which, like other canals, the Ship Canal route stitches together places that
aren’t directly connected by road and rail routes.
From the start of the canal at Eastham Locks, past Ellesmere
Port, the refineries at Stanlow
and the Runcorn Gap with its road
and rail bridges, the Ship Canal clings to the river bank.
As it approaches Warrington
it dives through the town in a dead straight line that continues under the M62 Thelwall Viaduct, then weaves it
way towards Irlam and beneath the
M60 at Barton.
Shortly after the M60 viaduct it passes the two 1894 swing-bridges at Barton, one for the road and the other the historic replacement for the even more historic James Brindley aqueduct (1791) that was sacrificed to make the Ship Canal possible.
Tanfield Railway: Andrews House Station, Co Durham
By an accident of signposting, my visit to the Tanfield Railway [https://www.tanfield-railway.co.uk] began at East Tanfield which is perhaps not the best place.
I later discovered that Andrews House station is where the
party’s at, not least because it’s within walking distance of the Marley Hill
engine shed, where there’s lots to see.
The station building at East Tanfield is the very welcoming
Tommy Armstrong Tea Shop, its tables impressively laid out with fine-looking
china. Coffee and pastries are in
abundance, and they’ll even sell you a train ticket, written by hand.
However, there’s a noticeable lack of what the heritage
industry calls “interpretation”.
Even the timetable is occult, possessed by knowledgeable old
geezers squinting at sheets of A4 paper which they fold and stuff
surreptitiously in the pockets of their anoraks.
You can, of course, ask the station staff. Like freemasonry, knowledge here is acquired
by degrees.
Trains appear when they’re good and ready, and they’re worth
waiting for.
This is a no-nonsense coal railway, partly dating back to
around 1720, which allows it to claim to be “the world’s oldest railway”.
It operates sturdy little tank engines, such as would, in
times gone by, heave long trains of coal wagons out of the local collieries.
The passenger carriages are mostly four-wheelers that don’t go “diddly-dee, diddly da” but rather “clunk, clunk” – Victorian equivalents of the notorious Pacers, but much more elegant.
It’s always heartening on a volunteer-run railway to see
engine crew who look not a day over twenty.
The passengers are mostly older than twenty – serious
enthusiasts who know what’s going on, and couples with glum-looking dogs which
would rather be chasing sticks than catching trains.
There’s a trackside footpath, useful for photographers who
wait, tripods set and cameras ready, to capture the seldom-spotted tank engine.
The place is a delight. Everyone is friendly and unrushed. And the roast pork breadcakes are
superlative.
This is an intriguing place, a medieval hill-top castle
documented from 1256 and for centuries owned by the Ricasoli-Firidolfi family,
who sold up only in 1968. The interiors,
on the ground floor at least, are entirely baroque, with an unrestored patina
of faded splendour.
We were treated to a cookery demonstration by the chef,
Elena, who spoke only Italian, translated (or perhaps explicated) by the
hostess Geraldine, who extolled the quality of the Castle’s extra virgin olive
oil, which we were invited to smell and taste.
We were shown how to make an Italian stew, which seemed to me exactly how I would make an English stew with Italian ingredients.
The pasta-making demonstration was more entertaining, and a
great deal of pasta was passed hand to hand around the group.
We were invited out for antipasti
on the terrace, where a classical wing of the house (with a medieval turret on
the end) faces a flat lawn and a wall, from where expanses of hillside
vineyards are visible.
No sooner had we wandered outside than a misty rain began to
fall, and within ten minutes the waitresses shifted the antipasti back into the castle and a loud clap of thunder heralded
a downpour that lasted no more than half an hour.
We tucked into the antipasti
indoors while Geraldine gave lectures first on the Castle’s white wine and then
on the rosé, all the time pouring wine into everyone’s glasses and interrupting
her flow with “I’ll fetch another bottle.”
There was no sniffing or spitting.
This was a straightforward invitation to get trollied.
We weren’t formally shown the downstairs rooms, but instead
trotted off to the cellars which are tricked out with barrels and racks of
bottles.
Geraldine took us from the cellars to a surprise – a tiny,
intact private theatre, dated 1741, complete with perspective scenery and a
balcony. I can find nothing of any
significance about it online, and I’ve never come across it in the
theatre-history literature.
Indeed, I wonder if its provenance and history have been
seriously researched. It is at any rate
a great rarity.
A three-course dinner followed, liberally lubricated with
red chianti and a dessert wine. I sat
back from the conversation and watched the sunset through the trees outside the
window.
Then predictably, “pat,…like the catastrophe in the old
comedy”, came the buying opportunity. My
fellow guests queued up to buy bottles of wine and olive oil, while I sat in an
armchair and watched.
Eventually we began the journey back, of which the first seventy minutes were simply a succession of hairpin bends and a few small villages. We joined the motorway south of Florence, and it took another three-quarters of an hour to reach our hotel in Montecatini Terme.
I reflected on the considerable appeal of the Castillo di Meleto. It’s now owned by a joint-stock company and you can stay there, at rates which are high but not outrageous. However, it’s so remote that it would be impractical to go anywhere: it’s simply a place to enjoy, with extensive gardens, an infinity pool and a restaurant down the drive for lunch and dinner: https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.castellomeleto.it/&prev=search.
Park Palace Ponies (the former Park Palace Cinema), Dingle, Liverpool
The Park
Palace Theatre in Toxteth was built for James Kiernan, a Liverpool theatre
proprietor and designed by J H Havelock-Sutton, a Liverpool architect.
The
auditorium is a simple rectangle, with the balcony (now removed) around three
sides. There were two boxes (also now
gone), decorated with tall oval bevelled mirrors and lit with brass gas
brackets. Corinthian pilasters with
acanthus-leaf bases flank the proscenium and support a broken pediment. The proscenium is thirty feet wide. Backstage there were four dressing rooms but
no fly-tower.
Some
accounts mention a gallery, and the Royal Arms mounted above the proscenium
following a visit by King Edward VII in 1903, but there is no present-day
evidence of either.
The
original audience capacity was 1,100 (600 in the pit and stalls, 500 in the
balcony) and it opened on December 4th 1893 as a variety theatre.
Though it
retained its music-hall licence, the building was used as a cinema from
1905. For a time the Sheffield cinema
impresario Jasper Redfern ran it, and the Weisker Brothers took it over and
renamed it the Kinematodrome in 1910.
In 1911,
Peter Dunn acquired it and ran it as cine-variety for nearly twenty years. During the 1920s there was a seven-piece
orchestra. The variety acts and the
orchestra ceased abruptly with the introduction of sound movies on January 8th
1930. By then the capacity had reduced
to 961.
After Peter
Dunn’s death in 1934, the proprietor was Miss Sheila Dunn, presumably his
daughter.
The final
film show – Russ Tamblyn in The Young
Guns and John Payne in Hold Back the
Night – took place on March 11th 1959.
After its demise as a cinema the Park Palace was successively used as a factory, a chemist’s shop and a store for motor-vehicle spares. For a period from 1984 it became the Mill Street Chapel.
Subsequently the building was largely left to deteriorate.
It was briefly revived as a performance space in 2008, and was once used as a location for the Channel 4 soap-opera Hollyoaks, but from 2010 onwards it was advertised to let.
It remained
unused until 2017, when Keith Hackett and his daughter, Bridget Griffin, set up
Park Palace Ponies, to provide a riding school aimed at local children under
ten, bringing them the benefits of spending time with horses and the perception
that horse-riding isn’t only for the affluent.
Hundreds of children from south-central Liverpool (defined as postcodes
L8, L17 and L18) have since taken part in riding lessons at the Palace: http://www.parkpalaceponies.com.
The community benefits of this scheme are palpable, and not confined to the children and their families. The horses graze at the local allotments, where their manure is much appreciated.
For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.
English Institute of Sport Sheffield: A Bus Ride Round Attercliffe visit, April 7th 2019
On the popular Bus Ride Round Attercliffe trips that I run in conjunction with South Yorkshire Transport Museum, we regularly make a stop at the English Institute of Sport Sheffield, to show that the Lower Don Valley has begun an astonishing transformation since the demise of the heavy steel industry in the early 1980s.
Designed by FaulknerBrowns Architects, the Institute opened in December 2003, funded by Sport England and managed by Sheffield City Trust (successor to SIV Ltd), a Health and Well Being Charity. It’s newer than the Arena and the demolished Don Valley Stadium which were built for the 1991 World Student Games. It’s even newer than the nearby IceSheffield, designed by the Building Design Partnership and opened in May 2003.
It has and continues to provide training facilities for an impressive array of champions, including Sheffield-born heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill, boxers Anthony Joshua and Nicola Adams and the Paralympian table-tennis player Will Bailey, as well as sixty local sports clubs and seventy thousand local school children a year.
The initial cost of the facility was £28 million, and the Institute aims to balance usage at 90% local community to 10% elite athletes.
A quick guided tour shows Bus Ride passengers, many of whom grew up in Attercliffe after the Second World War, the facilities for boxing, wheelchair basketball and – most impressive of all – the huge 200-metre indoor running track.
Though we’ve had to pause individually-booked Bus Rides because of increasing bus-hire costs I’m looking forward to offering heritage bus-ride experiences to groups from outside Sheffield in future, and in the ‘Sheffield’s Industrial Heritage’ tour I plan to take people first of all to Magna, to see the hot, dark, dangerous spaces where workers spent their days in the steel industry and then, for contrast, to EISS to experience the light, clean, air-conditioned spaces in which people exercise and perfect their sport skills in the twenty-first century.
The Valley has come a long way within a lifetime, and I want to present this in as dramatic a way as possible.
The ‘Sheffield’s Industrial Heritage’ bus tours for groups are arranged as bespoke itineraries, and Magna and EISS may not always be available because of major events taking place. On occasions the Bus Ride may visit other equivalent buildings in the city centre or the Lower Don Valley. For further details please click here.
Our Lady Star of the Sea RC Church, Watson’s Bay, Sydney, Australia
On my previous visits to Sydney, in 2010 and 2011, I made no use whatever of its extensive ferry system, an omission as grievous as my failure, on my first visit to Rome, to visit the Vatican.
At leisure on my 2017 visit, I took the first opportunity to catch a bus to Circular Quay and hop on the first ferry out, which took me to Watson’s Bay, a headland with spectacular views and a long history of maritime and military significance.
There I had a cup of tea at Doyle’s on the Wharf [https://www.doyles.com.au], one half of a celebrated fish restaurant, along with Doyle’s on the Beach (established 1885). It was too early for fish and chips, but I’d gladly return another time, especially if it was an appropriate occasion for the more formal Doyle’s on the Beach which has tablecloths.
My exploration led me along the cliff-top path known as The Gap. The Gap was and still is a notorious suicide spot, though the cliff edge is strongly fenced. There is a memorial to Don Ritchie OAM (1925-2012), a local resident who repeatedly took in and tried to help people in despair at The Gap.
He was a World War II navy veteran who after the war worked as an insurance salesman. He was adept at spotting distressed individuals on the cliffs and by making a simple approach such as “Can I help you in some way?”, and inviting them home for a cup of tea, he saved the lives of 164 potential suicides. As he put it, “You can’t just sit there and watch them.”
Another rescuer of more than thirty potential suicides was Rexie, a German Shepherd bitch owned by the proprietor of the Gap Tavern in the 1960s. She had the ability to recognise potential suicides and would bark to attract assistance.
I tried to locate the former tram-track, where first-generation Sydney trams plunged down hairpin bends to reach their terminus, and though I think I found it in part, it was so overgrown as to be unrecognisable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjwCFtqKgc.
When I emerged on to Old South Head Road and headed back downhill towards the bus terminus I came upon St Peter’s Anglican Church, a tiny little cell designed by Edward Blacket in 1864 and the more remarkable Our Lady Star of the Sea RC Church, a 1910 exterior with a much later spire but no tower, and a beautiful 1966 interior, with a five-light east window in the form of the Southern Cross constellation.
The bus that I caught back into town took me a different way, so that I discovered the stunning views to be had of central Sydney, with the Harbour Bridge in the distance, from an area called Dover Heights, before the bus dropped down into Bondi Beach, the classic Australian version of seaside.
Manchester is not only the home of the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom – Chetham’s – but boasts one of the thirty-odd surviving independent subscription libraries in the country, thePortico Library, founded by a consortium of Manchester businessmen in 1802 and opened on Mosley Street in 1806.
Originally set in a fashionable part of town, the Portico
Library provided an exclusive, politically neutral meeting-place for the
professional and business communities, enabling members to read, research and
keep up with the news in quiet, comfortable surroundings.
The architect Thomas Harrison of Chester provided an
impressive entrance through an Ionic portico which led to a galleried newsroom
lit by a glazed dome, “larger by 700 square feet than the coffee room of the
Athenaeum in Liverpool”. Bookcases lined
the first-floor gallery. The total cost
of construction was £6,881 5s 3d.
By the 1830s the properties on Mosley Street were given over
to trade, as the merchants moved out to such suburban developments as Victoria
Park. Members commuted into town for
business and used the library mostly in the daytime. By 1900 most of the members were described as
“gentlemen”, though some were cotton manufacturers and merchants.
The Portico Library is rightly proud of its distinguished members. Paul Roget (1779-1869), a physician at the Infirmary and the author of the famous Thesaurus, was the first Secretary. The scientist John Dalton (1766-1844), a lecturer in a Manchester dissenting academy, was accorded honorary membership in return for “superintend[ing] the going of the clock”. The Rev William Gaskell (1805-1844), minister at Cross Street Chapel and a noted academic, was Chairman for thirty years and is commemorated in the library by a portrait and a bust.
Others included the engineer Sir Joseph Whitworth Bt (1803-1887), the cotton manufacturer, merchant John Rylands (1801-1888) whose widow founded the Library that bears his name on Deansgate, and the industrialist and politician Ernest Simon (latterly Baron Simon of Wythemshawe, 1879-1960).
Members’ families visited the Library from the outset. An irritable notice of 1817 declared
“Children should not on any account be suffered to…touch the prints, or to turn
over the leaves”. “Ladies of the
respective families of the Subscribers” were allowed to use the Library, and
one of them, Mrs Ann Frost, was allowed membership in 1853, though limited
formal membership for women was only introduced in 1873.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the social and cultural environment in which the Library operated changed increasingly rapidly. Though the cotton trade remained robust, Manchester’s prominence in national politics had shifted to the Chamberlains’ Birmingham. Municipal free libraries, scattered across the city, reduced the need for the Portico’s book collection. The Proprietors debated at length amalgamating with the Athenaeum, selling the book-collection, or selling the entire building.
A practical solution was found after the end of the Great
War. In 1920 the ground floor and
basement was leased to the Bank of Athens, which paid for an internal glazed dome
to allow the library to occupy the first-floor level with an independent
entrance on Charlotte Street. The Manchester Evening News commented that
if the Portico “cannot claim to be rolling in money, it may claim that there
will be plenty of money rolling beneath it”.
The building was listed in 1952, which both ensured its
survival and limited the scope for adaptation.
Eventually, after Lloyds’ Bank, successors to the Bank of Athens, moved out, the internal dome was replaced by a solid floor, separating first-floor library from the area below, which became a public house called The Bank.
This transformed library was inaugurated in 1987, and its flexibility led to a rebirth of the institution, which in addition to offering books, periodicals and light refreshments as it always did, mounts exhibitions, hosts performance events, hosts weddings, awards literary prizes and welcomes outside visitors.
For details of Mike Higginbottom’s ‘Manchester’s Heritage’ lecture, please click here.
The 60-page, A4 handbook for the 2019 ‘Manchester’s Heritage’ tour, including a section on Ancoats, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £15.00 including postage and packing. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.
The town clustering round the Montecatini Terme spa is relatively modern: until the eighteenth century the area on which it is built was a swamp.
The old town is a small, perfect Tuscan hill town, Montecatini Alto, strongly suggestive of the better known San Gimignano, with towers, churches and a market place perched at an altitude of 1,000 feet above the valley floor. Of the twenty-five medieval towers built in Montecatini, six survive.
The easy way to Montecatini Alto is by the Funicolare connecting the historic hill-town with the baths in the valley bottom. This one-kilometre line opened in 1898, in the presence of local resident Giuseppe Verdi. The track was blown up in 1944 and restored in 1949. There was a further closure for upgrading between 1977 and 1982.
The two cars, named Gigio and Gigia (also numbered 1 and 2 for the avoidance of ambiguity) are inclined, with three compartments and external balconies front and back. Gradient markers towards the top indicate increasing gradients from 25% to 38.5%. The views are spectacular and the experience didn’t feel vertiginous. The line stops for lunch between 1.00pm and 2.30pm. A round-trip, taking less than ten minutes, costs €7: https://www.funicolare-montecatini.it/orari-e-prezzi/timetable-and-prices.
At the top I visited the quiet little Church of St Joseph & St Philip and, next to it, the Torre dell’Orologio, a clock tower with an unusual dial showing only six instead of twelve numbers. The Torre dell’Orologio was fitted with a dial facing northwards across the town by 1552, and the existing mechanism dates from 1695. It chimes “alla Romana”, the Roman striking system in which a low note represents five and a high note one.
At the opposite end of the main square, the Piazza Giuseppe Giusti, I climbed another hill to visit the Church of St Peter the Apostle, which has an odd little museum, including a disconcerting relic of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of Montecatini.
I’d never have found my way to Monticatini Terme if I hadn’t booked a Great Rail Journeys ‘Highlights of Tuscany’ holiday [https://www.greatrail.com/tours/highlights-of-tuscany] which was based in the excellent Hotel Francia & Quirinale [https://www.franciaequirinale.it/en], providing four-star quality with individuality and amenity, meticulously efficient service, an elegant lobby, a spacious lounge with many settees and a grand piano and an equally spacious restaurant with a separate area for private parties.
Two minutes’ walk from the hotel is the Parco delle Terme, which contains the spa from which the town takes its modern name, strongly reminiscent of Buxton or Harrogate and utterly enjoyable: https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.termemontecatini.it/&prev=search. Open courtyards with columned arcades open one into another, with fountains and an apsidal concert stage for music.
Baths on this site are documented back to 1201, and were reported by the Montecatini physician Ugolino Simoni in 1417. In modern times the spa was developed by Grand Duke Peter Leopold, who sponsored the construction of the Bagno Regio (1773), the Terme Leopoldine (1775) and the Terme Tettuccio (1779).
The heyday of the resort was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though some parts are in need of restoration they evoke the time when the composer Verdi lived in the town, with such neighbours as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Beniamino Gigli and Luigi Pirandello.
A series of elaborate marble counters offers a variety of waters through labelled taps: Rinfresco, which “promotes the elimination of waste through the renal pathways and restores lost salts in sports training”, was the only water that was actually flowing and for lack of a cup I couldn’t drink any of it. It wasn’t very warm. Behind the counters a series of tiled pictures show the ages of man, voluptuously suggesting how water improves health at every age.
I had lunch – smoked salmon and remarkably tasty white bread accompanied by a litre of aqua naturale – in the high, domed, dignified Caffè Le Terme, far too grand to be called a café in any language but Italian. On a very hot day the air conditioning was natural and effective – huge doors wide open on three sides of the high-ceilinged room.
Elsewhere in the park from the main complex are other spa buildings, the Terme Torretta (1904), the Terme Excelsior (1907) and the Terme Tamerici (1911).
At the edge of the park, I booked a table for dinner at the Profumo Garden Bistrot [https://www.thefork.it/ristorante/profumo-garden-bistrot/307299?cc=18174-54f] and later enjoyed a superlative five-course meal in an open-air setting, as the hot day cooled to warm and the sun dipped lower in the sky. Perfect.
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