Is nothing sacred?

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A LONG WALL on the south bank of the River Thames faces the Houses of Parliament. It is literally covered with hearts painted in red. Each heart is supposed to commemorate one of the more than 220,000 people who died of covid19 in Britain. Families and friends of the victims can write the names of their lost ones on the hearts on this wall – the National Covid Memorial Wall. For those who work in the Houses of Parliament and those who walk past it, this heart covered wall is a chilling and moving reminder of a terrible period during the recent history of Britain as well as the rest of the world.

A group of volunteers:

“… repaint faded hearts, re-write dedications that are being absorbed into the Wall, remove graffiti, and look after the Wall to ensure that those lost to Covid19 in the UK are remembered as people, not as a statistics.” (www.nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/)

Recently, we watched some of these generous people, some of them mounted on ladders, working with their paint brushes. As we walked alongside the wall, reading some of the names of people who were killed by the covid virus, we noted that not all of the inscriptions were dedicated to remembering the dead. Some of them, it is sad to relate, were tasteless graffiti and statements such as “X loves Y”. It is these thoughtless additions to a wall of sorrow that the dedicated volunteers work to eradicate. Seeing these irreverent and irrelevant ‘blots’ on the wall made me think “is nothing sacred?”

Salvation in Sandwich

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THE HIGH STREET runs through Sandwich (Kent) from south to north. At its northern end, it runs beneath an archway next to a former toll bridge across the River Stour. After 1977, the toll was abolished. Under the archway, which is part of the mediaeval barbican (built c 1470) that used to be a gateway through the town wall, there are several notices of interest.

One of the notices records the fact that tolls were collected from users of the bridge from 1759 to 1977, and the last toll was collected from the Mayor Councillor on the 30th of September 1977. Near this memorial, there is a table of tolls dated June 1905. Interesting as these two signs are, it is the third one that was a complete surprise to me. It read:

“This plaque is to commemorate Richborough Transit Camp 1939-1940 where 5000 men found refuge from Nazi persecution on the Continent. During the Second World War most of them volunteered to fight for the Allied cause.

Erected in gratitude to the citizens of Sandwich and East Kent who, as in the past, welcomed the refugees.”

I noted that this brief notice made no mention of the identities of the refugees. However, another plaque, attached to the nearby Bell Hotel, clarified the situation. The hostelry was:

“… A meeting place for Jewish refugees from the Kitchener Camp, Richborough, Sandwich 1939-40”

The Kitchener Camp was a former army barracks located north of the Stour, not far from the toll bridge, on the west side of Ramsgate Road. There is now no trace of it because it was demolished after the end of WW2. During 1939, 4000 mainly German and Austrian Jewish men were accepted for accommodation in the camp on condition that they would not be granted UK citizenship or work, and must emigrate to the USA. The camp received no government funding. It was paid for by Jewish organisations including The Central British Fund for German Jewry (founded 1933).  At the start of WW2, 887 of these men volunteered to join the Pioneer Corps, which carried out light engineering projects at the battle fronts. After the Dunkirk episode in May 1940, the British public became suspicious of German speaking refugees because they were worried about the possibility that some of them might be involved in spying and sabotage. So, those, who were not enrolled in the war effort, were shipped out to internment camps in Australia and Canada, and then Kitchener was closed.  

During its brief existence, the Kitchener Camp, which began accepting refugees on the 20th of January 1939, became a hive of cultural activity as can be discovered by looking at the highly informative website – https://kitchenercamp.co.uk/   There were concerts and a cinema provided by the Odeon Cinemas, run by it’s the  Jewish founder Oscar Deutsch. I had never heard of the Kitchener Camp (aka ‘Richborough Tansit Camp’) until I spent a few days in Sandwich recently. Regarding the plaque commemorating it beneath the arch of the barbican, it mentions 5000 men, but reliable sources always refer to 4000 Jewish men. This puzzles me, as it was placed by the Jewish Community of Great Britain ( according to https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/263444/).

White and nutritious – milk and racism

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UNTIL I WAS ABOUT 18, I drank a pint of chilled milk in the morning and another when I came home from school. I did not drink all the varieties of milk that were supplied by the milkmen who worked for the Express Dairy Company, but chose the ‘homogenised’ variety, which did not have cream at the top of the bottle. Never once whilst drinking this refreshing slightly watery liquid did I ever imagine that I would one day visit an exhibition about milk. Today, the 29th of July 2023, I viewed an exhibition called “Milk”, which is being shown at the Wellcome Collection in London’s Euston Road until the 10th of September 2023. Amongst the numerous exhibits displayed in this beautifully curated show, the following particularly interest me.

  1. There was a collection of decorated porcelain cream jugs.  Each one was shaped like a cow. Cream used to be poured into the hollow cow via a hole in its back. Then, a lid was placed to cover that orifice. To use the cream jugs, the cows were tilted so that the cream could flow out of another hole through creatures’ mouths.
  2. There was a terracotta model of a mule carrying two trays laden with cheeses. This Ancient Roman artefact dating back to the 3rd or 2nd century BC was found by archaeologists in Southern Italy. In times long before refrigeration, making cheese was one way of preserving milk for future use.
  3. I saw a metal lactometer, which was used to determine the amount of water in milk. My wife said that when she was a child in India, milk used to be delivered to the door. To check whether the milkman had watered it down, her mother used a lactometer just like the one on display at the exhibition.
  4. Our daughter spotted an 18th century etching depicting St Bernard of Clairvaux kneeling before the Virgin holding the Christ Child. As the saint knelt before the Virgin, he received a squirt of her milk from her breast. This was supposed to grant him wisdom and eloquence. When she was studying History of Art, our daughter wrote a thesis about this curious episode – The Lactation of St Bernard’.
  5. A rather uninteresting looking exhibit proved to be most fascinating. It consisted of two milk testing forms, which had to be completed after a farmer’s batch of milk had been tested for diseases, bacteria, fat content, and protein content. The forms on display related to milk produced by cattle on the Dartington Hall Estate in Devon. The Estate was founded to research the merits of various scientific farming methods. One of the founders of the Estate was the agronomist Leonard Elmhirst (1893-1974). What made him special in my mind was that after meeting the great Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) in the USA in 1913, he later (in 1922) set up for Tagore an Institute of Rural Reconstruction near Tagore’s university at Shantiniketan (now in West Bengal). After marrying Dorothy Straight, Elmhirst and his wife established the Estate at Dartington in 1925. It was modelled on what he had founded near Shantiniketan.

There were plenty of other exhibits that were both visually interesting and thought provoking. A theme that I felt pervaded the exhibition is related to the colour of milk – white. Because milk is often perceived as being healthy, pure, and virtuous, it may also nourish the malevolent ideas of white racists. One of the exhibits showed a video of Trump supporters cavorting around, each one of them waving large bottles of white milk whilst shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans. Yet, the ancestors of racists like these were perfectly happy to snatch the newborn babies of black slaves away from their mothers, so that these unfortunate women could be forced to breast-feed the babies of the white women of the families who owned them. Their milk was white, but not their skin colour. To compensate for these and other harsh reminders that all is still not well in the racial tolerance scene, the exhibition includes a satirical film from You Tube ( https://youtu.be/cevXg_SlT-Q ), which makes fun of people with racist tendencies.  

Well, it never occurred to me that milk and racism might be considered in the same brackets until I visited the splendid show at the Wellcome Collection. It is well worth seeing not only because of its historical and scientific aspects, but also for its artistic and sociological content.

It was much earlier than Greenwich Mean Time

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DESIGNED BY BENJAMIN Wyatt (1775-1852) and George Louch, then later modified by John Rennie (1761-1821), The Clock House (built 1817) overlooks the harbour in Ramsgate, Kent. As its name suggests, this building is surmounted by a square tower with clocks on each of its four sides. Today, the time on the clocks is Greenwich Mean Time (‘GMT’) or, when appropriate, British Summer Time (GMT+1). But this has not always been the case.

The Clock House was home to chronometers that were used to synchronise shipborne chronometers employed for determining longitude. The edifice stood on what was known as the Ramsgate Meridian Line, which was established in 1819. This was before 1851 when Sir George Airy (1801-1892) defined the position of the prime meridian that runs through the observatory at Greenwich. It was not until 1884 that the prime meridian at Greenwich was recognised internationally, much to the disgust of the French, who hoped it would run through Paris.

The now disused Ramsgate Meridian Line is east of the Greenwich prime meridian. So, when the clocks on the Clock House were set to Ramsgate Mean time, they were 5 minutes and 41 seconds ahead of GMT. A notice beneath the clock tower informs the viewer that the clocks are now set to show the same time as it is in Greenwich. And if there are any ancient mariners still using Ramsgate Mean Time, they are informed by another notice that:

“Ramsgate Mean Time is 5 min 41 sec faster than this clock.”

Whichever time you choose to use, it is well worth spending some hours, if not longer, in Ramsgate, which is full of interesting things to see as well as the Clock House.

Artists as artworks in London’s East End

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BRICK LANE IN east London has been home to immigrants from various parts of the world. Currently, many of the people who live and work in the area are of Bangladeshi heritage. In the last few years, the area has attracted the ‘trendy’ set, whose interests are mainly in the attractions north of the former Truman Brewery. Some years ago, my friend David, visiting from Atlanta (Georgia), and I paid a visit to Brick Lane and were surprised to find a bit of ‘Ye Olde England’ almost hidden amongst the predominantly Asian businesses. It was the The Pride of Spitalfields London – a real old-fashioned ‘boozer’. Stepping into it, it was difficult to imagine you were not in a country pub, but in the heart of east London. It is on Heneage Street next door to what had once been part of a brewery.

In 2015, the Trustees of the Gilbert & George Centre, a charity, acquired the building next door to the pub. On the 1st of April this year (2023), the converted buildings were opened to the public. They have been beautifully transformed by the SIRS Architects practice and they house artworks by the duo Gilbert and George (‘G&G’), who both trained at London’s St Martins School of Art. According to the G&G website (gilbertandgeorgecentre.org):

“The property was purchased with the idea to create a permanent home for works of the artist and to enrich London’s cultural offering thus further.”

G&G produce often very colourful works, all of which include the pair of creators within their images. As artists, they are also the subjects of their creations – they are almost always depicted in all their works. Their works deal imaginatively with a wide variety of things that we all face in our daily lives – some of them often considered too distasteful to be discussed or displayed. But G&G boldly bring them to our notice in a dramatic way.  As Michael Bracewell, a Trustee, wrote on the website:

“Gilbert & George maintain an ideological opposition to formalistic art theory and the reference of art to the history or theory of art. Asserting instead the power of emotion and actuality, their art addresses subjects that are culturally excluded, neglected or disowned. Their art questions social taboos and morality. By looking at difficult subjects the art and vision of Gilbert & George is intended to ‘de-shock’ rather than seeking to shock. Its aim is not the simple task of ‘shocking’ a viewer, but the difficult task of interrogating a subject and themselves … Unchanging, they have the appearance and countenance of modern sober-minded, anonymous citizens, who have embarked on the astral journey of their own Divine Comedy: purgatory, Heaven and Hell as they find it and perceive it in our world, in nature and in themselves.”

Whether or not you like the creations of G&G, the new Centre is well worth visiting, even if only to see the fine design of the buildings containing it. If the art is all too much for you, you can pop into the pub next door and seek liquid relief. And if you loved the place, which we did, you can visit the boozer to celebrate the arrival of this superb new addition to the London art scene.

An artist and a gallery in a British seaside resort

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THE GREAT BRITISH artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was accurately described by the writer John Ruskin as “… the father of Modern art …” in 1843. Turner first visited Margate when he was aged 11. After about 1820, he often stayed in the town because he thought the skies over the area were the most beautiful he had seen in Europe. Between 1827 and 1847, he stayed in the town in a guesthouse owned by Mr and Mrs Booth. When Mr Booth died in 1833, Turner became a close companion of the widowed Sophia Booth, who died in 1878. He also adopted the name ‘Booth’.

The house owned by Sophia Booth, where Turner resided, is no more. Where the guesthouse once stood is now occupied by the Turner Contemporary Gallery (‘TCG’). The gallery was designed by David Chipperfield (born 1953), and opened in April 2011. Just as Turner’s paintings were considered avant-garde and even provocative when they first appeared, the TCG is a highly adventurous contrast to the rest of the old town that neighbours it. Some buildings look better inside than outside. The TCG is a good example of this. The gallery spaces are spacious and well-lit both by natural and artificial light. They were a perfect place to view the highly colourful creations of the Brazilian born artist Beatriz Milhazes (born 1960), which are on show at the TCG until the 10th of September 2023.

I believe that the presence of the TCG has elevated Margate’s status from being a simple, unexceptional seaside resort to a place that attracts a much wider range of visitors than it did in the past. As happened in London’s Islington in the 1960s, a rather mundane place has become somewhere that people now feel they ‘must visit’. Although the usual British seaside attractions can still be found in Margate, the town is now also catering for the ‘up market’ clientele. And that cannot be a bad thing because when I lived in Kent (1982-1992), apart from Whitstable (and maybe Broadstairs), most of the seaside places in north and east Kent were in decline and rather melancholy.

The opening of the TCG has done for Margate what the art Triennale has done for another previously dreary Kent town – Folkestone. Even if Turner might have been shocked to see what now stands where he spent many happy hours with Sophia Booth, I feel sure that he would have been happy to know that it has revitalised a town which he loved.

Remembering victims of war in Sandwich, Kent

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Some of the WW1 names and the Falklands victim below

IN THE HEART of Sandwich in Kent, near to the deconsecrated Church of St Peter, there is a war memorial that was erected to commemorate those from the town who died in the ‘War to End All Wars’ – the First World War (1914 – 1918). Roughly 100 names are recorded on the lists of people who died during WW1. However, they are not the only people listed on this monument because ‘The War to End All Wars’ did not live up to its name.’

The memorial lists about 15 people who were killed in WW2 (1939-1945). In addition, three of Sandwich’s population perished in the Korean War (1951), and more recently, one of the townsfolk was killed in the Falklands Conflict (1982).

I sincerely hope that no more names need to be added to this war memorial as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, or any future wars.

Safe and sound under the ground

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DURING WW1, THERE were German Air raids over the town of Ramsgate in Kent. Many were killed by relatively few bombs.

In the late 1930s, the forward thinking Mayor of Ramsgate and his Chief Engineer designed a series of tunnels deep below the town to be used as air raid shelters. Over three miles of tunnels were dug into the chalk far below the town. The digging was carried out by miners from the (now closed) coal mines of East Kent.

Bunks in the tunnel shelter

Except for a short section about 25 feet below the ground, which was reinforced with thick concrete, the rest of the tunnel system, which was on average 75 feet below the surface, was self supporting. The tunnels could accommodate up to 60000 people, but because many of Ramsgate’s population were either evacuated or serving inthe armed forces, the town’s population was about 15000 during WW2.

The tunnels were fitted out with electric lighting; bunk beds; benches; first aid stations; and chemical toilets. People were allowed to spend the night there or when air raids were in progress. Given that Ramsgate was the last place that German bombers flew over when returning to mainland Europe, they tended to drop any remaining bombs on the town. In addition, the Germans had heavy long-range guns at Cap Gris Nez just across the English Channel from Ramsgate, and shells capable of destroying buildings fired from these could arrive in the town without prior warning.

In short, the tunnel system saved innumerable lives. Today, excellent guided tours allow visitors to explore it. Today, the 24th of July 2023, we joined one of these tours. Everything was beautifully and interestingly explained. Although not as well furnished and comfortable as the huge nuclear bunker built at Gjirokaster in Albania in the 1960s, what was constructed in quite a hurry at Ramsgate is remarkable.

Having just seen the not too brilliant film “Oppenheimer”, I could not help wondering how many people might have been saved had Hiroshima and Nagasaki been supplied with deep shelters like that at Ramsgate.

Loads of lavender in rural Kent

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ON OUR WAY to visiting new friends in Kent, at their recommendation, we stopped en-routr at Castle Farm near Shoreham. We were delighted to discover that this agricultural enterprise specialises in cattle and growing lavender. It is the largest lavender farm in the UK.

I had no idea until we visited the farm that lavender was grown on such a large scale in England. I have visited lavender farms in Provence and seen many glorious photographs of lavender fields in that and other regions of France. However, it came as a complete surprise to discover similar fields in South East England. I am grateful to Asha and Matthew for introducing us to this place.