The Beer Wurlitzer

Wurly Workings!

Not exactly Devon history, but definitely a fine historical artifact preserved in Devon: the Beer Wurlitzer.

This is England's oldest Wurlitzer cinema organ, originally installed in 1924-25 in the Picture House, Walsall. Its travels took it to the Congregational Church, Beer, in 1957, after which it put in years of service, eventually undergoing full restoration over 2008-2009. It's used for services as well as demonstrations and regular concerts.

There are two sites: one billed as the original site www.beerwurly.co.uk and the other as the official site www.beerwurlitzer.co.cc.  The original, by Michael Cull - the prime mover for the project - has considerably more detail on the complex and arduous work of restoration.  Having cleaned up the works of a harmonium - very simple in comparison - I can only admire the effort and stickability needed to do this.
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Royal Albert Bridge: white or not?

When restoring historical artifacts, there are often difficult technical/aesthetic decisions. Do you attempt to restore original appearance or that best-known from the later history? An instance of such a situation is that of ancient Greek and Roman statuary, by long tradition known in bare white marble form, but fairly recently discovered to have been painted, often garishly. In this case, there would be no question of repainting the statues, but 3D scanning and virtual reconstructions enable us to see what they would have looked like. The Peplos Kore is a classic example.

On April 24th 2010, the Western Morning News just reported a somewhat similar situation with a historic Devon object: Campaigners want listed bridge to be painted white.

A campaign has been launched to restore one of Brunel's iconic Westcountry bridges to its original colour.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar is, at present, a kind of "battleship grey", say campaigners. Its original colour was "off-white".

The campaign, led by Charles Howeson, chairman of the Plymouth Area Business Council, is calling for Network Rail to paint the bridge in its original colour.

Mr Howeson said proposals by engineers to restore the bridge were an opportunity to return it to the colour it was in the time of Brunel.

Research by Network Rail has revealed the bridge has been several colours since 1859.

These include the original colour and various shades of grey.

Network Rail, which has applied to Plymouth City Council for listed building consent to carry out a huge engineering project on the 151-year-old railway bridge, wants to repaint it in its current "goose grey" hue. This has been the colour of the 2,200ft structure since it was Grade I listed in 1952.

A look in contemporary accounts easily confirms the original colour. For instance:

More to the southward we see Plymouth Harbour, and the beautiful scenery surrounding it ; with a peep at the broad estuary of the Tamar, and the white tubes of the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash.
- page 476, Dartmoor streams, an angler's week among the tors of south Devon, Once a Week, April 16th 1864

... its huge unornamented white iron cylinders make a lofty gradual arch over the abyss...
- page 388, Old England: its scenery, art and people, James Mason Hoppin, 1868

These don't say what kind of white, but it wasn't dazzling: the current newspaper reports describe it as a "pale stone" colour. Patrick Baty's weblog News from Colourman is worth reading in general for his discussions of historical architectural colours, but is especially pertinent for its extremely interesting account - A Brunel bridge - of his visit to sample the paint layers of the Royal Albert Bridge as part of 150th anniversary research. There's more background on the bridge itself at the official site www.royalalbertbridge.co.uk.

Update: May 3rd 2010

More from BBC Devon, 26th April: Brunel's bridge original colour mystery solved.
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British Pathé: Devon footage

"Ottery barrel running, 1965, British Pathé: click to view

Just received from Victoria Spiegelberg at British Pathé Ltd:

Dear all
We are an online historical archive that covers the period 1896 to 1970 and we have found over 500 newsreel clips relating to Devon's cities, towns and villages, some of which date back to 1902. There are a lot of newsreels from both world wars and many other fascinating films covering a variety of topics in Devon up until c1970 which we thought the Local Historical Societies in Devon would be interested in exploring. I have put a few into a workspace as an example of what is in there:
http://www.britishpathe.com/workspace.php?id=5232&display=list

We are keen for members of the public to find items that may relate to their own family history and region. With 90,000 newsreel items within the archive, there will be many Devon clips that just wouldn't have been watched since their original screenings in the cinemas many decades ago. Searching the archive can be time consuming but hopefully fascinating at the same time - we have had nearly 1000 emails in the past year of people finding either themselves or ancestors hidden within the archive.

The British Pathé archive is now entirely managed via our website which is free and accessible to anyone and part of my role is to point relevant societies, associations and organisations in the direction of our website to let them know that there is historical footage on our site that may be significant, important or of general interest. The website was traditionally designed as a resource for researchers and producers within the broadcast industry. However, we are changing a number of features to make it more useful for the general public.

You are more than welcome to link to the website on your site or to use a still to link through if you think it is suitable for your local history societies. If it would be more helpful to put together a workspace relating to a particular town or village we can also do this. The key for us is that people know the resource is available and at the same time we hope that you are able to uncover some exciting clips.

This a superb resource, whether for Devon or general interest. The archive is fully searchable: just dipping, I've found short films such as the 1960 floods in Exmouth and Exton (42177), this short travelogue featuring Dawlish, Bickleigh Bridge, Porlock Weir, Seaton and Beer (8740), a 1932 Exeter-Plymouth relay race (2856), a 1954 village pageant in Torrington (47688), 1960 footage of the ruins of Hallsands, the aftermouth of the Lymouth flood in 1952 (30239) and a 1957 feature on its rebuilding (659), a 1967 promotional film on Westward Ho! (74977), the 1962 Exeter University student rag (41985), the 1955 grounding of the SS Venus off Plymouth (63440), and the Ottery Barrel Rolling in 1965 (41127).
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Sidmouth: a harbour never built

Pennington Point landslip: click to enlarge

On Sunday I visited Sidmouth, in part to have a look at the recent cliff slippage at Pennington Point (pictured above) at the east end of Sidmouth seafront where Alma Bridge crosses the mouth of the River Sid.

This collapse was featured in the news recently (for instance, in the Sidmouth Herald: Sidmouth cliff fall closes link to town) with obvious issues relating to coastal erosion and the safety of coastal properties and installations. Here probably isn't the venue for discussing those, but reading East Devon District Council's Pennington Point Cliff Erosion Review (PDF here) connected a few observations leading to some historical background I didn't know: a failed venture to build a harbour for Sidmouth in the 1830s.

If you walk along the beach eastward from Alma Bridge and look up, you'll see an opening in the cliff. Don't mess with it unless you're a serious speleologist; it's the breached remnants of the Sidmouth Tunnel, a never-used narrow gauge railway tunnel dug behind the cliff face: see The railway that never was and Peter Glanvill Photography for images. Its intended use was to carry stone for the Sidmouth Harbour Company, set up to build a harbour at Chit Rocks (below what is now Connaught Gardens and Jacob's Ladder 1) with two L-shaped piers to be named respectively after Princess Victoria and the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia 2. The Nautical Magazine, Volume 6, 1837, reported:

Sidmouth Harbour. — Active means are in progress for immediately commencing this highly important undertaking. The engineer, Mr. Price of London, has made all preliminary arrangements for widening and extending the esplanade onwards to the site of the harbour, the excavation for which in the Chit Rocks to the westward of the town have been begun. A tunnel will be carried through the cliffs to the eastward and a temporary railway extended through the same and along the seaward side of the town, for the purpose of bringing down some of those masses of rock, which lie under the cliff at the Hook Ebb Point, for the construction of the pier and breakwater. The birth-day of the Princess Victoria, May the 24th, has been fixed on for laying the foundation stone for this harbour. A representative of her Imperial Highness the grand Duchess Helena of Russia will lay the stone, and it is expected to be done with due masonic honours.

Ambitious and clear-cut plans ... which rapidly came to nothing. The Sidmouth Harbour Company of 1836 by MJ Messenger has the full story.

There was a later proposal to build a harbour in 1862, when an Admiralty report proposed the Sidmouth Railway and Harbour Bill ...

The object of this Bill is to incorporate a Company, under the title of " The Sidmouth Railway and Harbour Company," and to empower them to construct three lines of Railway, none of which, however, interfere with their Lordships' jurisdiction; but power is taken in the Bill to construct a Port, Harbour, or Asylum Harbour, at Sidmouth, the mouth of the River Sid, with a breakwater, piers, jetties, &c.

Clause 22 describes the limits of the Harbour ; and as Clauses 24, 25 and 2/ protect fully the Admiralty jurisdiction, assent is given to the Bill.

Admiralty, 27 March 1862. W. G. Romaine.

... and an 1865 Act was passed "to enable the Sidmouth Railway and Harbour Company to make and maintain a Branch from their authorized Railway in the Parish of Sidmouth; and for Other Purposes" (see Hansard). This venture fell over in a mess of company law without even completing the railway line 3. The railway finally came to Sidmouth in 1874, minus the harbour portion of the plan.

Over a century later, there still isn't a harbour, but it may yet happen if the Port Royal marina development plans go ahead.

1. See Chips Barber's Sidmouth Past and Present, pages 11-.
2. The reason for the Russian connection is unknown, but at the time the two countries were on good terms. Sidmouth's Alma Bridge is, naturally, one of any number of monuments to the Battle of Alma in the Crimean War, only a couple of decades later.
3. See Shrimpton v. The Sidmouth Railway and Harbour Company, The Law Times Reports, February 29th 1868.
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WW2 documentary: memories sought

Carolyn Wells writes:

I am working on a television documentary for Discovery about the posting of American troops in Devon during the Second World War. I am currently looking for anyone who has any memories of what it was like to have US troops in the area, and how they interacted with the local community. If anyone has any memories I can be contacted on carolynwells0@gmail.com

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Baring-Gould and the great Bindon landslip

In East Devon, Seaton (or at least its easternmost part, Axmouth Harbour) is at one end of the famous Axmouth-Lyme Regis landslip terrain, the Undercliff, a region bibliographically under the vast shadow of John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. However, there's an earlier novel set in this part of East Devon and Dorset: Winefred, a story of the chalk cliffs (Sabine Baring-Gould, 1900). A romantic melodrama ("Love, iniquity, treachery, smuggling, redemption") it's set around the then hamlet of Seaton. The heroine Winefred Marley, made homeless, is torn between the twin heritages of her mother (who comes from rustic stock among the smugglers and seafarers of East Devon) and her gentleman father (who moves in Bath high society). The smuggler Jack Rattenbury and the evil ferryman Olver Dench, who is after Winefred's mother's cache of gold, are thrown into the mix, with the Great Bindon Landslip of 1839 being the climax of the novel.

From the start, we know all is not well with the landscape, as Winefred and her mother Jane have been made homeless by cracks appearing in their house. This proves to be the first precursor to the novel's climactic event: the great Bindon landslip on the Christmas Eve of 1839, where a huge tract of farmland slipped to produce the feature now called Goat Island. Toward the end of the book Jane Marley is shown something worrying by a man working near her clifftop house:

"Missus," said he, "I advise you to budge. Something is going to take place; we don't know what, and I've had orders to give you warning."


"I do not understand you."


"Come and see for yourself."


Jane followed the ganger, and he led her from the house, through the bushes, to a point on the edge of the cliff that commanded the beach and the sea some three hundred feet below.


She was silent.


No wind was stirring. The moment was that of the turn of the tide. At a distance of half a mile from the shore the surface of the water heaved like the bosom of of a sleeper in rhythmic throb. There were no rollers, no white horses.


But nearer land the sea was boiling. Volumes of muddy water surged up in bells as from a great depth, and spread in glistening sheets, that threw out wavelets which clashed with the undulations of the tide. Moreover, there appeared something like a mighty monster of the deep, ruddy brown, heaving his back above the water.


"That which is coming in is sweet water," said the man. "One of our chaps has ventured down and tasted it. It is not the fountains of the deep that are broken up, but the land springs are feeding the ocean. Did you ever witness the like?"


"Yes," said Jane, "there was something of the kind took place, but only in a small way, before the crack formed when my old cottage was ruined."


"Exactly, missus. And there is going to happen something of the same sort here, but on a mighty scale, to which that was but as nothing. Where it will begin, how far it will extend, all that is what no mortal can guess. Now you know why I have been sent to tell you to clear out as fast as you can. If you want my help, you are welcome to it."

Furthermore, the birds and the rabbits have deserted the cliff. In true movie-cliche style, Jane goes back to the house alone, locking the door behind her to pack (because she has a secret stash of gold). But the villain, the evil ferryman Olver Dench, is hiding there. He attacks her, packs a carpet-bag with the gold, and leaves her tied up and locked in the house. She manages to get to the window in time to see the landslip starting:

Looking out she saw Dench standing irresolute — as one dazed. She saw something more. At that moment the house swayed like a ship. The surface of the land broke up, and seemed transmuted into fluid, for in one place it heaved like a mounting billow, and in another sank like the trough of a wave. It was to Jane, peering through the little window as though she were looking at a tumbling sea through the porthole of a cabin. Again the house lurched, and so suddenly and to such an acute angle, that Jane fell from the table.


(To be concluded) - The Graphic serialisation

Sabine Baring-Gould was an interesting character. Yet another prolific - see bibiliography - but largely forgotten novelist, he combined broad antiquarian and folklore interests, such as The Book of Were-Wolves (Gutenberg EText-No. 5324) and Curious myths of the Middle Ages (Internet Archive curiousmythsofmi00bariuoft), with hymn-writing, folksong collection and, it appears, general eccentricity (as told in the story of his failing to recognise his own small daughter at a children's party). The diverse contents of his library can be seen at Devon Libraries' Sabine Baring-Gould's library at Killerton list.

Judging by the description of Winefred, a story of the chalk cliffs by Seaton Visitor Centre Trust, Baring-Gould's overall personality is reflected in the wealth of geological and topographic detail. As The Pall Mall Gazette review said:

He doubtless knows his public, and his public doubtless enjoys the didactic manner in which he pauses in his story to give long passages on the geological formations of the cliffs of South Devonshire, wedges of informing discourse on the history of smuggling on the south coast, instructive scraps about bacon-curing and tinder-boxes, and long string of platitudes upon the general influence of education.

- The Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), Wednesday, December 19, 1900

Winefred: a story of the chalk cliffs is still a good yarn, though. It was serialized in The Graphic in 1899 and is out of copyright (Baring-Gould died in 1924); Google have scanned it, but only gives US access. (Of related interest, William S. Baring-Gould, the prominent Sherlock Holmes scholar and analyst, was one of Baring-Gould's grandsons, so it looks as if the cataloguing fervour ran in the family).

As to the resolution to the cliffhanger in The Graphic... The previous episode left Jane Marley trapped in the house amid the landslip; and now spectators above, including her daughter Winefred, see a running figure. It's not Jane Marley, but Olver Dench, carrying the carpet-bag. He runs in terror as the landscape tears itself to pieces around him, giant fissures opening.

Rendered crazy with fear he mounted a fragment of rock and saw about him the wreckage as of a world - prostrate trees, leaning pillars of rock, disrupted masses of soil, bushes draggling over to drop into the throats open to swallow them.

Dench makes a final attempt to escape by jumping one such chasm, but can't or won't leave the heavy bag of gold:

He ran, leaped, was flying in space over the chasm, touched the rock on the farther side, caught at the grass, but was overbalanced, dragged backward from the crest by the weight of the bag, and went down with a tuft of wiry grass and hawkweed in his right hand, and disappeared in the midst of the rock and earth that was in process of being chewed. Now the carpet-bag, then a leg, next a hand appeared, and went under again. Then up came the head, only next moment to be drawn beneath and disappear in the mighty mill.

When the landslip ceases, however, amid the general devastation the house remains, damaged but still largely intact, and Jane Marley is found alive and not badly hurt. She and Winefred are reconciled, Jack Rattenbury promises to go straight and gets parental blessing to marry Winefred, and all (except the buried Dench who "has gone to his account") live happily ever after.

Here's a contemporary factual account:

Supposed earthquake in Dorsetshire

One of the greatest convulsions of nature ever on record, or that has taken place within the memory of man in this neighbourhood, has occcurred in Dowlands and Bending Cliffs, situated between Lyme and Axmouth harbour. Various are the opinions respecting it - some attribute it to the long-continued and heavy rains, others insisting on its being an earthquake. It certainly has every appearance of the latter. The inhabitants are no strangers to the occasional sliding of the cliffs, on this part of the coat, both east and west, but here is presented a scene of awful grandeur.

The above cliffs, which are very lofty, are about three miles west of Lyme Regis.

On Christmas Eve, Mr Chaple, the tenant of Dowland's estate, invited his workmen to the farm-house, to regale them for the evening, among whom were the occupants of four cottages, situated on the common at the foot of the cliffs. On their return home they found considerable difficulty in opening their doors, but took little noticce of it. On rising on Christmas morning they discovered a settlement of their homes; and becoming alarmed, removed their goods with all speed, and retired to Dowland's farm, about a mile on the top of the cliffs, for safety. And very providentially too; for shortly after an immense portion of the top cliffs, consisting of between forty and fify acres of arable and pasture land, with their crops, together with the common below, sunk to a depth varying from 50 to 100 feet; two of the above tenements being completely buried, whilst the other two are shattered to their very foundations. The scene presents a spectacle not easily described - gigantic rocks having been rent asunder, lofty trees buried beneath the mighty mass, with only their tops visible; large fields with their crops, separated, one part here and another there - immense precipices formed, awful chasms which appear bottomless, the whole of which strike the beholder with terror and amazement and present a striking view of the Almighty power of Him "who holds the mountains in the scales and the hills in a balance." The length of cliffs affected by this shock is more than two miles, and perhaps in breadth about one, encompassing about a thousand acres. But perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of the whole is, that immense and ponderous rocks in front of this scene of action have been forced by the concussion from their beds, where they have reposed for ages, under the bed of the ocean beyond low water mark, and made their appearance in pyramids and different forms - in some places 40 or 50 feet above the sand, and have wonderfully formed a sort of harbour, while the beach adjoining the land remains unmoved. Boats have entered this naturally formed harbour on the eastern side, which is shallow, and found in the middle three fathoms of water. Outside the rocks thus formed, towards the sea, is about five fathoms at high water. Thousands of persons have already been to visit this extraordinary scene. No doubt but it will attract numbers of the nobility and gentry to Lyme Regis. The celebrated Pinney cliffs, which are situated betwixt Lyme and Dowlands, and which have been admired for their romantic scenery, sinks into comparative insignificance, and its lofty rocks must "hide their diminished heads" when compared with the grandeur and sublimity which Dowland's cliffs wll in future present. Dr Buckland, of Oxford, the eminent geologist, who has been residing in Lyme for some time past, has prolonged his stay, in order to explore and view the wonders of this phenomenon of nature. He states that he never witnessed anything equal to it in England. It is to be hoped that his, or some other able pen, will gratify the public by a full and proper description of the scene.

- The Hull Packet, January 10, 1840

Update, June 2011: Winefred, a story of the chalk cliffs is now available on the Internet Archive.

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Devon and Cornwall Illustrated

A nice regional example of some of the superb books digitised by Google: Devonshire & Cornwall Illustrated (from original drawings by T. Allom, W.H. Bartlett, &c., with historical and topographical descriptions by J. Britton & E.W. Brayley, Illustrated by Thomas Allom, Fisher, Fisher & Jackson, 1832). See title page.


Dawlish


Brixham
Apart from the general historical, topographical and aesthetic interest, the book has considerable technological and bibliographic importance as one of the early applications of prints from steel-plate engraving. Copper plates wore out rapidly, giving print runs in the hundreds, but steel plates ran to thousands of prints, enabling the production of popular and inexpensive editions of topgraphical books such as Devon and Cornwall Illustrated.


Torquay
Chapter 5 of this study by James M'Kenzie-Hall - Illustrated Picture Books: the production of 19th century topographical books with steel engravings with particular reference to the London firms of Fisher, Son 7 Co and George Virtue - focuses on the work of Allom and Bartlett.


Exmouth
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