Chippenham's 'everlasting' wall made by 4,000 kids
"It'll still be there in 125 years time, unless they develop the riverside or something like that. In all essence, it'll be there in thousands of years time," he added.He explained that to make sure it was "everlasting", they cast it in concrete, including putting all the tiles on that way too, which involved "numerous contractors", some of whom were specialists.
The headteachers at Chippenham's schools - there were nine then - wanted a project to involve all of them.The children were given themes to decorate the tiles around like culture, transport, environment and the the future: "They're all really good. There are none that are not interesting."
Potter Christopher White co-ordinated the artists and potters who worked with the schools and children to get the tiles done.He made letter stamps so each child could imprint their initials: "One of the nice aspects is that it would then be possible so that anybody who'd been involved would be able to show the tile they made to their kids sometime down the line."
The shape was designed by sixth form students at Hardenhuish School, so with the wall next to the river, there is a blue line that meanders like it, dividing the themes.Mr Konynenburg said it took over his life for about four months: "It's one of those projects that I was immensely proud to be involved in."
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Telegraph
22 minutes ago
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The historian who worked so hard it nearly broke him
The historian Asa Briggs apparently aimed to write 1,500 publishable words a day and liked to be working on at least three books at any one time. His Stakhanovite labours included some 45 books, countless reviews, reports, forewords and encyclopaedia entries, unstinting service on countless committees, presenting many lecture series and chairing numerous learned societies. Not to mention a five-volume history of the BBC and the text for a volume of Brooke Bond Tea picture cards. Though his career is not often celebrated today, his life, as Adam Sisman 's measured but compelling biography makes plain, was both busy and remarkable. It also came at a cost: the very drive that fuelled his output later became a burden, as writing turned from joy to compulsion. Briggs was born in Keighley in 1921, a grammar school boy raised above a grocer's shop in what he would later call 'modest comfort'. His upbringing was imbued with the northern, nonconformist virtues of hard work, discipline and self-reliance, values he never ceased to embody, even after acquiring grand houses, a peerage and a taste for haute cuisine. (As well as becoming president of the Workers' Education Association, the William Morris Society, the Victorian Society, the Ephemera Society and the Brönte Society, Briggs was also a founding member of the British Academy of Gastronomes.) He started degrees at Cambridge and LSE, concurrently, at just 16, taking firsts from both of them. By 1942, at 21, he was working at Bletchley Park. Not long after the war, he was teaching at Worcester College, Oxford, where his pupils included a young Rupert Murdoch. Briggs's professional trajectory, as Sisman puts it, was a story of 'spectacular success'. Vice-Chancellor of Sussex, Chancellor of the Open University, Provost of Worcester, and eventually Lord Briggs of Lewes, he scaled and conquered the post-war academic establishment with dizzying speed and unwavering determination. But though he had a knack for cultivating useful friendships and influencing people, his success did not endear him to everyone. His jet-setting lifestyle led colleagues to dub him 'Professor Heathrow', while the acerbic Hugh Trevor-Roper liked to joke, 'What is the difference between The Lord and The Lord Briggs? The Lord is always with us.' Sisman, an acclaimed biographer – including of Trevor-Roper, and John le Carré, whose serial affairs he revealed to the world in 2015 – is ideally suited to the job. He's a writer highly attuned to the niceties, sensitivities and indeed the hypocrisies of the British class system and of academic life, a complex terrain which he traverses smoothly. He is also, as he freely admits, necessarily selective: a 'comprehensive' life, he writes, would 'require at least a decade to write' and 'several volumes'. At a little over 400 pages, The Indefatigable Asa Briggs is more than enough: what emerges is a sharply sketched figure, part whirlwind, part workaholic, part Victorian relic. Briggs's scholarship roamed far beyond the confines of traditional historical research. He was a pioneer of labour history, urban history, local history, business history and the history of communications. But this breadth was also a liability: as AJP Taylor once remarked of The Age of Improvement 1783–1867 (1959), that cursed book inflicted upon generations of British schoolchildren, he was 'a veritable Lysenko of verbiage, making three sentences grow where one would do'. (Victorian People (1955) and Victorian Cities (1963) are much more focused and better reads; the BBC volumes remain his most significant, if not uniformly admired, contribution to original research.) He was also not always reliable. As Sisman writes, Briggs often accepted commissions he could not fulfil: some he abandoned entirely; others he completed only under duress, to vastly differing standards. In the final decades of his life, the compulsion turned to torment: Sisman notes a growing detachment in the later works, as deadlines loomed and standards slipped. For a richly researched biography, Briggs's private life remains curiously opaque. There were entanglements with various women, Sisman notes, though he refrains from going into more details – a curious obscurity, given the le Carré book. Briggs met his wife Susan when she worked as his research assistant. She later remarked that love 'was never part of it', but somehow the marriage endured: she had affairs, while together they climbed the social ladder. There's a faint Pooterish air once Briggs reaches the top: letters of complaint to travel agents and cashiers; luncheon with the Queen; and a dinner at Bletchley Park, late in his life, served by the finalists of Celebrity MasterChef. For all the accounting of Briggs's frenetic activity, though, there's a strange hollowness at the centre of the book: we get no sense of Briggs's interior life. Perhaps there was none: he may have been too busy or too distracted. 'Greedy', one of Sisman's sources, an unnamed historian, calls him. If so, it wasn't just greed for money – though he made plenty – as much as for the role of the historian to become a kind of public institution. Sisman's biography is dry-eyed but humane and honours the labour without overstating the legacy. It amounts to a portrait of a man who, like Victorian Britain, Briggs's great subject, believed that more was more – and who, like that age, left behind an awful lot, some of it brilliant, some of it best forgotten. ★★★★☆
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Iron Age hoard moves permanently to Yorkshire Museum
A collection of more than 800 Iron Age artefacts found in a North Yorkshire field has now found a permanent home. The Melsonby Hoard is believed to be one of the UK's largest finds from the period, and was discovered by metal detectorist Peter Heads and excavated with the help of Durham Yorkshire Museum has now secured the acquisition of the hoard, through public fundraising and a £192,096 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Andrew Woods, head of research and collections at York Museums Trust, said the discovery went beyond "a once in a generation find". "The museum has been collecting for 200 years and we have nothing like this, nothing like this has quite been found in the UK before," he said."So to be able to put that into the collection, to share that with people, to tell new stories is one of the best days of my career."The initial discovery was reported to the authorities in December 2021 and site excavation started the following year, with the support of the British Museum and a grant from Historic the findings, archaeologists from Durham University unearthed the partial remains of more than seven wagons and chariots, along with horse harnesses and ceremonial spears. Earlier this year, after preservation and study at Durham University, the Yorkshire Museum launched a fundraising campaign to secure the hoard for its Woods added he was "blown away" by the public response to the online fundraiser, which raised £54,000 in donations from the public, bolstered by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and £20,000 in other Blacker, chief executive of York Museums Trust, said the museum was delighted at the opportunity to secure the future of "a significant piece of Yorkshire's history"."Thanks to the incredible support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, as well as generous donations from members of the public, the hoard will remain here in Yorkshire, to be made available for everyone to see and to enjoy," she said."We remain committed to researching and conserving these unprecedented finds to improve our understanding of our shared past and securing them for future generations." Dr Woods explained that the acquisition was only "the beginning of the story" for the artefacts."Keeping the hoard close to where it was found, in the region, alongside other objects in the collection also from the Iron Age means we can tell the story of the North," he added that after further preservation and research projects, the hoard would be publicly displayed in the museum. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Rukmini Iyer's quick and easy recipe for halloumi, courgette and chickpea fritters
Fritters are perfect for a crowd, because you can make them ahead and warm them through just before serving as a bite-sized snack. If the words 'halloumi fritters' have your friends and family zooming towards a tray as quickly as mine, you might even want to double up on the quantities below. Unsurprisingly, these are also my children's preferred way to eat courgettes. Prep 20 min Cook 20 min Makes 25+ 200g courgettes, trimmed and coarsely gratedSalt 200g halloumi, coarsely grated200g drained chickpeas (jarred, ideally), mashed with a fork40g plain flour 1 egg 4-5 tbsp olive oil 50g mayonnaise 50g greek yoghurt Juice of ½ lemon 10g chopped dill Put the grated courgette in a sieve with a pinch of salt, mix, then leave to sit for 10 minutes while you prep the other ingredients. Tip the courgette into a tea towel or kitchen roll, then squeeze it out to expel all the excess water. In a large bowl, mix the courgette with the halloumi and mashed chickpeas until well incorporated, then stir in the flour and egg to make a thick batter. Put a tablespoon of the oil in a large, nonstick frying pan on a medium heat, then, working in batches, scoop scant tablespoons of the fritter mixture into the hot oil, using a second tablespoon to nudge and shape them into neat rounds. Fry the fritters on a medium heat for two to three minutes on each side, until golden brown and cooked through, then transfer to a tray lined with kitchen paper to drain. Repeat until you've used up all the batter (with my largest frying pan, this usually takes four batches). While the fritters are frying, mix the mayonnaise, yoghurt, lemon juice and dill in a small bowl and set aside. If you're not eating the fritters straight away, leave to cool, then cover and refrigerate, along with the dip, until needed. Warm through in a 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4 for five minutes, then arrange on a platter and serve with the dip in a nice bowl in the middle.
