NEWSLETTER
CHAIRMAN'S NOTES / Summer 1998Have you noticed that whenever a mistake is made by a Bank or Supermarket, the excuse is usually that it was "the computer". Recently we went on that modern machine, Star Trek, no, sorry, I mean Eurostar. We marvelled at the slick operation; the speed was impressive after we left the antiquated British track behind and so smooth that it was better than flying. Even the baggage trolley was beamed up the escalators untouched by hand and I am told that the lavatories on the train were worth a visit just to see them! ! All seats are booked and one waits under a sign with the coach number on it and sure enough the train stops precisely at the right spot for one to get on.
On our return from Brussels we boarded with confidence, complete Eurostar converts by now and went to our seats; horror of horrors, someone was sitting in one of them and what was more she had a ticket just like ours; same train, same date, same coach, same seats!! I went to find the Chef de Train (why is everything so French, we paid for half of this didn't we?), naturally, she was French too. "Impossible", she said, "our computer never makes a mistake". The train started and she and I walked about halfway to England down this long train back to the disputed seats. She looked in disbelief at the tickets, her confidence in the computer now evaporated. There was no real problem as her plan showed other unoccupied seats available. Next time your Bank says "Oh, it was the computer", say in return, "Yes, but who enters the information into it." The simple rule is, rubbish in, logically sorted rubbish out. I would travel by Eurostar again but next time I shall ask the booking agent to check the seating plan twice so that the right numbers are put in. Don't blame the machine, it is the humans who are fallible!!
I must say a few words about the loss of Roger Hall. Roger was a staunch supporter of this Centre for many years. Both on and off the Committee he was a unique provider of talks, visits, theatre outings, holidays and other things too numerous to remember. Always willing and a superb organiser he will be greatly missed by all of us. Our most sincere condolences go to Pam who, like him has always been a great supporter and worker.
I hope you enjoy the summer visits we have arranged for you. All we need now is good weather, but as someone remarked recently, our members are such good company we don't notice the weather all that much when we are with them.
Gordon Burgess
NEW MEMBERS
We are pleased to welcome the following new members who have joined the Centre since the Spring 1998 issue of the Newsletter:
Mr & Mrs D A Baugh / StaffordMr A L Collis / Burntwood
Mr K Collis / Chase Town
Ms A Foster / Derrington
Mr J Greenwood / Penkridge
Mrs D M Ingram / Gnosall
Mr P D Harrison / Stafford
Mr D L Jones / Stafford
Mrs M A P C Swinnock / Lichfield
Ms A WaIler / Stafford
SUMMER PROGRAMME – ERRORS
"Coracles, Castles Comfy Chairs - 20th August"
A picnic lunch at Brampton Bryan Village Hall is mentioned, but there was no reminder to PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN PICNIC LUNCH!
"Chip Supper on the Cut - 12th August"
The programme indicates that the meal will be Fish, Chicken, or Meat Pie, but, unfortunately, there is no space on the booking form for your choice.
If you have already booked, please 'phone Mr Ricketts (leaving a message if necessary) indicating your choice. If not, please add your choice on the booking form.
SUMMER EVENTS -1998
As we expected the visits to Windsor Castle on 8th July and to "Coracles, Castles and Comfy Chairs" on 20th August have both proved to be very popular. We have waiting lists for both events but unfortunately the over subscriptions are not sufficient to justify repeating either event.
We still have spaces available for the "Chip Supper on the Cut" on 12th August and for the visit to Quarry Bank Mill and Little Moreton Hall on 10th September. Any interested member (or visitor) should contact me or preferably send me a booking with cheque.
C.E. Ricketts
OUR CENTRE INSURANCE COVER
Several times recently we have pointed out that our Insurance does not cover members over the age of 80. Some misunderstanding has arisen over this so I must point out that this rule applies to the Personal Accident section. There is no age limitation on the Public Liability cover.
As members we are all indemnified up to £2M for sums we may become legally liable to pay as a result of accidental bodily injury or damage to property caused to members of the public (or by one Centre member against another) in the course of our Centre activities in the United Kingdom. That is the legal situation which I have quoted from the policy for your edification - though you may like to read it more than once!!
It is sad that we cannot ignore our legal liabilities to-day. We are fast becoming a litigious society and people now seem to expect compensation for the most trivial of problems and in consequence one can be faced with horrendous legal fees. It is right that major matters should be covered but it is unfortunate that the pendulum is now swinging just a little too far for our comfort as organisers of events. I do hope that this finally clarifies the situation.
Gordon Burgess Chairman
OUR SILVER JUBILEE
The twenty-fifth Annual General Meeting of our Centre took place on 22nd April in the Mavesyn Ridware Village Hall- a pleasant and convenient venue which we have used now for the past three or four years. The turn-out (about 55 members) was - by AGM standards generally - reasonably good. Our Chairman, Gordon Burgess, was on great form though, once again, his plea for new members to serve on the Committee met with blank silence. It was gratifyingly clear that the members present were well satisfied with the existing Committee! One Committee Member, Jean Wootton, retired from the Committee due to demands on her time but, as Gordon put it, since her husband Joe is still with us we will no doubt continue to benefit from Jean's advice!
After the formal proceedings we were entertained by Les Ashton. Les is at the moment engaged in compiling a book of stories, or rather, reminiscences of noteworthy, and sometimes bizarre, experiences which have befallen him while painting. It seems there will be 22 of these, and if they are as amusing as the three he recounted on this occasion, get set for a rush to W.H. Smith! At the end of the final tale, entitled "The Damned Speckled Hen", Les was presented with a gift - a very tastefully wrapped bottle which he was asked to unwrap in front of his audience.
After a good deal of grappling with the wrapping he finally held up a bottle containing a red liquid and bearing a highly ornamented label carrying the name "Old Speckled Hen"! John Barber caught the event on his camera, but unfortunately it was the very first of 36 exposures so this write-up could be a little out of date if I waited for the photo!
Guy de Visme
LOCAL HISTORIC LANDMARK /In 1796 the Broad Eye Windmill in Stafford was built close to the River Sow as a corn mill with a cottage attached where the miller lived.
It had common sails to provide the power for 2 pairs of millstones on the 4th floor. To improve productivity around 1845 two steam engines were installed to drive 3 pairs of millstones on the 2nd floor.
Then after almost 100 years the mill ceased trading and the sails and machinery removed and the building was
Broad Eye Mill, Stafford
used for grain storage. In1925 the lower floors were altered and between then and the mid 1940s became a butchers shop a greengrocers shop and finally a cobblers.
In 1951 the Windmill was declared a Grade II listed building. A Friends Group was formed in 1996 and work is going on with assistance from the Borough Council and the Council for British Archaeology with the eventual objective of opening an Industrial Heritage Centre as a useful Educational Resource with space for meetings and small exhibitions. The Windmill features as No. 11 on the Stafford Town Heritage Trail.
Bill Parsons
FALKLAND ISLANDS - here we come!
Having found our way through the fairground, which was situated in Lichfield market square, 60 members met in St. Mary's Centre.
Mr Charles Brown then transported us, with the help of the R.A.F. to Port Stanley, the small cathedral city on the largest island of the Falklands group. We were even escorted into the islands by a fighter plane on either side of ours.
With the aid of wonderful slides and an excellent talk, we enjoyed a trip around Stanley such beautiful flowers - then off to see the scenery, followed by visits to some of the other islands - by plane of course, to see the birds and animals. Because they are unused to people, they do not regard them as enemies and so can be approached very closely resulting in wonderful pictures.
Other trips were made by Landrover - no hard roads other than in Stanley.
We saw the monument to the crew of one of the ships sunk in the Falkland crisis. There are others, all very simple and beautifully kept by the local people.
Our thanks to Mr Brown for sharing his hobbies of bird watching and photography. I loved the slides of the Emperor penguins and particularly of his wife, Gill, with the elephant seals. An evening of sunshine, flora and fauna and a small insight into life on the Falkland Islands.
Margaret Tanner
THE RESTORATION OF WINDSOR CASTLE
The National Trust, by its very nature, directs much of its energies to the preservation and appreciation of this land's many-faceted history and to the countless treasures which we have in these isles.
On March 18th Roger Venables, a senior director of the prestigious Stafford timber firm, Henry Venables, broke this mould. For, in a remarkably lucid and well-illustrated lecture, "The Restoration of Windsor Castle", not only did he take us through the distant past and the recent horrendous catastrophe of the Windsor Castle fire, but he showed us how, in the immense task of restoration, both architect and builder actually made "history" for the generations to come, for an opportunity was taken to improve on the legacy of the past and to create with matchless skill rooms and space of miraculous beauty.
The fire in November 1992 destroyed or severely damaged 9 principal rooms and over one hundred others within the area affected by the blaze. It is now accepted that the conflagration was started by a curtain igniting after being overheated by high intensity spotlights. The cost of restoration, including some noticeable improvements, was estimated to be in the region of forty million pounds and would take some 5½ years to complete. Contrary to so many enterprises of this nature, not only was this enormous task completed some six months earlier than anticipated - in November 1997 - but at about two million pounds under budget!!. Despite much speculation and, of course, as the castle was not insured, the Queen funded ca. 70% of the cost Herself. The remaining 30% was grant-aided by the State via English Heritage.
All the rooms have been restored to their original state, with the exception of the private chapel, the Holbein and Brent Stewart rooms, as well as the ceiling and east screens of St. George's Hall. For all these areas a new design was called for, enabling the best of 20th century architecture to contribute to the evolution of the Castle.
Roger Venables described in fascinating detail the sequence of events which led to his firm being awarded the contract for the construction of the redesigned Octagon Room with laminated dry oak columns, balcony, vaulted ceiling and unique lantern. This was the most demanding and precise work of the whole reconstruction, and was made even more difficult, as the only access available to the Octagon Room was a 3 metre diameter hole in the roof, some four storeys high and not visible to the crane operator on the ground. After the destruction caused by the fire itself, the buildings needed an extensive dry-out period, for some 1,500,000 gallons of water had been used by the fire- fighters extinguishing the blaze, at the rate of 4,000 gallons a minute. This period and the time taken for the reconstruction of the roof and the building of the new walls coincided with the intensive design development which started in 1995.
The firm of Henry Venables had worked with Sidell Gibson, the chosen architects, in their presentation, which was the one selected for the project, so that they were able, as it were, to hit the ground running. The complex design, based on a Gothic geometry relating to natural plant forms, had first to be demonstrated in "mock-ups" made out of laminated timber. The intricacies of eight 6 metre high columns, each comprising 25 moulded oak ribs, are beyond the scope of this report. Suffice it to say that the comprehensive sequence of slides, which showed how these were constructed in the company's workshops and how illusions of perspective were created by brilliant design - how an octagonal room on the ground floor became a square space higher up left an enthralled audience spellbound. We watched, as if it was happening before us, a ruin become a- fairy tale, a fairy tale which for a time became a nightmare for the firm of Henry Venables, for just as the construction of these complex pillars was well under way, fire hit again, causing massive destruction at the Stafford workshops, destroying both plant and newly completed structures. Back to square one, it seemed.
As the story unfolded, one had to keep reminding oneself that all these artefacts had had to be lifted by crane and "dropped" blind - albeit with telephonic instructions, through a very small aperture indeed. The crowning achievement was the lifting and placement of the lantern - made in the Stafford workshops and brought by low-loader to the Castle, where it was lifted skywards and, disappearing from sight, was gently lowered onto the steel roof and the matching internal wooden structures. Hand carving on site, done with incredible skill and patience, made each pre-constructed piece in this immensely complex jigsaw flow seamlessly into its neighbour.
Some bare statistics help to put this vast undertaking in perspective
5,500 cu. ft. of oak planking was used to make the joinery.
The core construction was made of American tulipwood and Far Eastern WBP plywood.
Internal glue was MUF resin, Aerolite 308 with GBP-X hardener.
Externally, the glue was Dynomel, L-425 with H-407 hardener.
The use of these non-traditional materials enabled, not only shapes to be made that would have been virtually impossible otherwise and ensured their stability, but also reduced the section of solid oak stock needed. Although it is obvious that no one has experience of these materials' performance over hundreds of years, there is little doubt of their durability.
Anyhow, as Mr Venables pointed out, he would not be around to take the blame if there should be any failure in the year 3000!
The one piece lantern structure was 3 metres wide and 3.5 metres tall, weighing in at 3 tons.
30 craftsmen were employed on the job and their average age was 35 years old. This is a heartening statistic, showing that the young in Britain, and in Staffordshire in particular, are as skilled as anywhere else in the world.
The vaulted ceiling has 200 individually shaped curved ribs, resting on four corners springing points and centrepieces ..
Henry Venables also supplied 1,200 sq. metres of oak flooring for St. George's Hall and surrounding areas, as well as supplying kiln dried oak to other joinery manufacturers working on the Castle restoration.
Roger Venables gave in the Weston Road High School hall, packed with members, a quite unforgettable evening and our appreciation was obvious after Gordon Burgess's eloquent vote of thanks. From a preliminary show of hands, it was fairly obvious that two, not one, coach loads of Trust members and friends will be visiting Windsor this summer.
At the end of the evening members were able to talk with Roger Venables and examine sections of the complex profiles used. The superb book, "Restoration The Rebuilding of Windsor Castle", by Adam Nicolson, (ISBN 07181 4192 X) was also on show. A unique video of the whole story is on sale only at the Castle itself. Many copies, I feel, will make their way back to Staffordshire in July!
R. Miller Yardley
THE FALMOUTH HOLIDAY