Author Archives: yamey

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About yamey

Active author and retired dentist. You can discover my books by visiting my website www.adamyamey.co.uk .

A conspiracy at the crossroads

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DUNCHURCH IN WARWICKSHIRE is located where the old road between Oxford and Leicester crosses that between London and Holyhead. This charming village was a place where, in its heyday, up to forty carriages a day stopped to change their horses for a fresh team. This was done at the various coaching inns in the village. One of these hostelries, which is still in business today, is The Dun Cow, where we ate a good English breakfast. Some of this inn’s previous guests included the engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848) and his son, another engineer, Robert (1803-1859), who dined at the hotel on the 23rd of December 1837. Their dinner was to celebrate the completion of the Kilsby Tunnel on the Birmingham to London Railway, a project supervised by Robert.

While we were wandering around the graveyard of Dunchurch’s St Peters Church, which dates back to the 12th century, we asked a gardener working there about where one of Dunchurch’s former famous characters had once stayed. He told us that he had no idea. Half-jokingly but with some earnestness, he added: “…we could do with another one like him.”

Guy Fawkes House in Dunchurch

The man about whom we were asking had associates, who were staying at the village’s former inn, The Lion Inn, in the early 17th century, the year 1605 to be exact. It was in early November of that year that those waiting at The Lion in Dunchurch were wondering about their colleague who was 79 miles away in London.

The fellows at The Lion were waiting to hear whether their co-conspirator Guy (Guido) Fawkes (1570-1606) had been successful in blowing up the House of Lords in London. He was not, and the conspirators waiting in Dunchurch were arrested. Had the plot to blow up Parliament and along with it the Protestant King James I succeeded, the men at The Lion were to have travelled to nearby Combe Abbey to seize Princess Elizabeth (1596-1662), who became Queen of Bohemia. As an informative website (www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/rugby-school-science-teaching-around-1900-2) explains:

“In 1605 the monarch was James I; the Princess Elizabeth was his eldest daughter and sister to the future Charles I. In 1605 she was nine and being educated by Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey. She wasn’t a Catholic, but the conspirators planned to convert her and use her as their figurehead … Her main importance with regard to British history is that one of her grandsons (the son of her youngest daughter Sophia of Hanover) became King George I.”

The man about whom we were chatting with the gardener was neither of the Stephensons, who dined at The Dun Cow, nor the Duke of Wellington, who also stayed in the village, nor Lord John Douglas-Montagu-Scott (1809 – 1860), whose statue stands facing The Dun Cow. He was referring to Guy Fawkes, but this time a Guy Fawkes who completes the job before being arrested!

The former inn, a lovely half-timbered edifice is now a private house, named ‘Guy Fawkes House’, even though the famous man never lived there. The rest of the village contains several old thatched cottages, a thatched bus shelter, and the old village stocks. Close to the town of Rugby, this village is well worth a visit.

A pillar box

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In Britain, posting boxes for letters and small packages are sometimes referred to as ‘pillar boxes’

While visiting the town of Warwick, famous for its castle, we spotted a letter box that is truly a pillar box.

This post-box (pillar box) is shaped like a classical pillar. It was made in cast-ron in 1856 and is one of two of this design in the town of Warwick. They are still in use.

An author’s angst

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UNTIL NOW I HAVE been self-publishing my books satisfactorily using a print on demand company called ‘X’. I typed the manuscript on Microsoft Word using one of X’s many templates and then uploaded it to the site. In the past, X convert the uploaded document to a .pdf file. As conversion from Word to ‘pdf always results in changes in formatting, I have always had to make modifications of my Word manuscript, often several times, before I am happy with the proofs provided by X. It was always a little time-consuming but, in the end, I produced a printed book that was, if not perfect, always satisfactory.

Now, all has changed. X will no longer accept manuscripts uploaded in Word. Instead, authors are required to submit their manuscripts in the .pdf format after fulfilling extremely detailed formatting specifications, which I must admit are beyond my technical abilities at present. I discovered that a well-known on-line trading company offers a self-publishing process, which permits authors to upload their manuscripts in the Word document format on their downloadable Word templates. I tried this, but the proofs generated by the company’s publishing system looked disastrous, to say the least. Maybe, I could have tried modifying my manuscript’s layout, but there did not appear to be a facility for doing so and, I could foresee hours if not days of frustrating work ahead.

I have spent several months writing my latest book, and even longer researching it, and now I would like people to be able to enjoy it and, I hope, comment on it. So, as many people often say in India: “What to do?”

Well, here is my current solution. I am going to upload my manuscript to one of my personal websites and make it downloadable for anyone who cares to read it. It will be downloadable free of charge because I write for pleasure rather than for profit and I value the thought that people might find what I write of interest. It is more important for me that my writing gets read rather than gets sold. Eventually, I hope to be able to produce a satisfactory paperback version of my latest work, but in the meantime, watch this space!

If anyone can offer me a simple solution to my problem, I would be grateful to see your suggestion!

A line of lovely houses in southeast London

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ONCE A VILLAGE in Kent, Deptford is now a riverside suburb in southeast London, just west of Greenwich. We visited Deptford to see the exhibition of contemporary art, which our daughter has curated. It is being shown at ArtHub in Creek Road and finishes on Sunday, the 25th of July 2021. So, hurry if you wish to see it.

Deptford is becoming not only a trendy place to be, rather like Dalston has become, but it also attracts artists and art galleries. Maybe, Deptford’s proximity to Goldsmiths College, which educates many kinds of creators, might explain its emergence as a new artistic district of London. Whatever the reason, Deptford now has an exciting and rather edgy feel about it.

Deptford, which I plan to explore further in the future, has a long history. Its Creek was a harbour for shipping as far back as the 11th century, if not before. King Henry VIII developed an important dockyard at Deptford. Eventually, it was involved with shipbuilding. Many ‘men-of-war’ vessels were launched here. The dockyard thrived until it was closed in March 1869.

Doubtless there is much history to relate about Deptford, but I will mention only one thing and that can be seen today. Albury Street runs east from Deptford High Street and lies just north of the lovely baroque St Pauls Church designed by Thomas Archer and built between 1712 and 1730. 

Albury Street, Deptford, London

Originally called ‘Union Street’, Albury Street was laid out between 1705 and 1717. The south side of the street, which is paved with cobbles (or maybe setts), has been rebuilt with modern dwellings. The north side is lined by the original terraced houses built by a local bricklayer, Thomas Lucas. These brick-built dwellings are distinguished by their beautiful porches, each of which has a pair of lovely woodcarvings that support the canopies above each doorway. Many of these have been restored sensitively.

Just who lived in these houses, which would have been remarkably superior in both appearance and construction for what was then a small village outside London, is subject to some uncertainty. Famous characters such as Admiral Benbow and Horatio Nelson have been mentioned, but much doubt surrounds the likelihood that they lived in this street.

In brief, a visit to Deptford is worthwhile not only to see what remains of Albury Street but also to enjoy the vibrant atmosphere and multi-ethnic nature of this corner of London.

Author at work

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Walled garden at Fulham Palace, London

I have been creating daily posts on this blogging website and have been flattered by the number of people who have taken time to read and, sometimes, to comment on, my writing.

I am putting the finishing touches to my latest book. This is a time-consuming process. So, I might not be posting items every day for the next few weeks. I hope that you will be patient with me if, for a short while, a new posting does not appear every day.

I will let you know more about my new book soon.

In the meanwhile, I thank you for your support and patience and keep well.

A high-tech church in London’s Hampstead

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FROM THE STREET, the Victorian gothic façade of Hampstead’s Heath Street Baptist Church is unremarkable. Over the past more than 60 years, I have walked or driven past this place of worship, but it was not until today (20th July 2021) that I entered it for the first time.

The church was designed by the architect and surveyor Charles Gray Searle (1816-81) and completed 1860-61. Searle was himself a Baptist. He had been apprenticed to the renowned master builder Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855), who bought stone from his father, John Searle, who owned a quarry near Wapping. Charles set up his own practice in about 1846.

According to C.W. Ikin, in his “A Revised Guide to Heath Street Chapel” (quoted in https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/bq/37-5_249.pdf):

“An early print of the proposed chapel shows buttresses but in its method of construction it was more modern, cast iron being used not only for the pillars and probably for the whole interior framework, but also for the gallery fronts and the mouldings of the pew-ends. The strength of the building is based upon this framework formed by the cast-iron pillars in church and hall below and their linking beams. The brick walls cling to the framework and have tiebars linking the hammer beam roof.”

Cast-iron columns

Cast iron, which has high compressive strength, began being used to create buildings at the end of the 18th century. Pillars made of this material can be made slenderer than masonry columns required to support the same load. The slender nature of the columns in the Heath Street Chapel is immediately evident when you enter the building. What is less obvious is that the decorative fronts of the gallery that surrounds the nave are also made from cast-iron. The material has hardly been used for structural elements of buildings since modern steel and concrete became available at the start of the 20th century.

If you do visit this church, do not miss the fine art-nouveau stained glass window at its western end.

Although the Heath Street Chapel was certainly not the first church to be built using cast-iron structural elements, it must have been one of the first buildings of its kind to have been built in Hampstead, which is why I have given this short piece the title “A High-tech Church in Hampstead”.

When we stepped inside the church, two men were setting up things for a lunchtime concert. They told us that these are usually held on Tuesdays at 1 pm. Details about these can be found on the church’s website, http://www.heathstreet.org/activities/lunchtime-concerts/.