Brings back some memories: one of the first things I did as a would-be archivist, in the depths of London's County Hall, involved a database of Building Act case files, and Clapton stadium was one of the first entries. (Other random buildings dotted round London trigger similar nostalgia...)
Sunday morning at Charles Holden’s Arnos Grove station, opened in 1932 as part of the Piccadilly Line extension from Finsbury Park, with its circular drum ticket hall supported by a single concrete pillar www.modernism-in-metroland.co.uk/arnos-grove....
Clapton Stadium
1928-1939
Owen Williams/Anthony Tripe and G.G. Wornum
A football & greyhound stadium originally opened in 1896. A new layout was overseen by Owen Williams in 1928, and a decade later a new entrance was added by Tripe and Wornum. The stadium closed in 1974 and was later demolished.
Poet Edward Fitzgerald died on this day in 1883; his translation/reworking of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is one of those works that you know better than you think, reading like a great string of quotes. Here's his grave in the churchyard at Boulge, *outside* the family mausoleum as he wished.
The 77th Aldeburgh Festival is up and running: for the next 17 days the Red House and its Archive will be open seven days a week, the Archive featuring an exhibition "Endings and Beginnings" on Britten's last years and how, after his death in 1976, things kept evolving and led to today's BPA.
RIP David Hockney: from the Red House Instagram account, www.instagram.com/p/DZfBM65lih1/. Hockney visited in 1980 to sketch Peter Pears for the latter's 70th birthday: the artwork can be seen in an article on our website at www.brittenpearsarts.org/news/70th-bi....
204 years ago, on the 14th of June 1822, Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine (automatic mechanical calculator) to the Royal Astronomical society in London. #otd #history 🗃️
Proustian image for those of us using PCs in the 90s. Periodically I still feel I should defrag my disk as a matter of good practice: not doing so feels like going days without cleaning your teeth, that kind of slobbiness.
The view from the invigilator's desk, ready for day 2 of the Aldeburgh Festival archive exhibition. The International Space Station has just passed over, by chance, so we can tell that the Festival isn't *quite* big enough to be seen from space, but there's a lot going on and we're up and running.
Fun way to spend a few minutes: www.theodramatist.com/early-modern....
I came out as a Quaker, which tallies: back in the 1990s when I catalogued the Hodgkin family papers I spent so long among 19th century Quakers I still sometimes have to remind myself that I'm not one of them.
Modernism in Metro-Land
Christopher Hilton
Five layers: the earth, the heavens, the clock... Come to the @rcpmuseum.bsky.social lecture evening on 23 June to find out how this 16th century device works, and take home your own working replica! history.rcp.ac.uk/event/body-k...
