Posts

This is a slight precursor to launching my other blog page on fully researching and documenting the entire remaining parts of Western Command Stop Line No 28 / Teme stop line. Of the defences put in place in 1940-41 to prevent an assumed German Nazi invasion of the United Kingdom and especially the defences around Worcestershire to prevent or slow the invasion reaching the industrial heartland of the English Midlands. The defence lines based around the Teme river are amongst the smallest. Despite that, they are the most interesting to me as a number were in what would even now be considered to be remote locations. The idea of using the Teme river as a natural barrier then re-enforcing with road blocks, removal or blocking of bridges combined with weapons dumps, machine gun posts and pillboxes was designed to slow any invasion party from getting up from Bristol or the Devon coasts towards the arms factories of Birmingham and the Black Country. Remote locations or not, obviously post war the weapons dumps, machine guns and active roadblocks were removed, but a few sites remained untouched. ...

In the earlier blog about the actual castle at Richards Castle, I looked briefly at the history of the castle ruins, but this also is tied to a rather nice church just in front. St Bartholomew’s, Richard’s Castle is no longer a working parish church, but is still consecrated ground and now run by the Churches Conservation Trust (to whom I really should become a member). The church was originally established by Richard Fitz Scrob or his son just outside the castle’s outer bailey and so dates from 1100 and something most likely. ...

I’m a bit late to this party, a number of bloggers and social media people have been posting about the XTEINK x4 e-reader for some time. But mine has turned up so I’m now getting around to doing my version. I ordered mine direct from the manufacturer and it came from China in around a week. Apparently 3rd party sellers might be cheaper but lock the firmware (not entirely but its an added inconvenience). ...

I originally sat down to write about the nearby church, but felt like these ruins deserved a post all of their own and it sets the history for my next post. What is the oldest castle in the UK? Well I guess it depends how you define a castle, the ancient hill forts like British Camp at Malvern and others probably qualify, but if you want a real castle the way most of us think of one, with a stone walls and keep it gets even more complicated. ...

One of those blogs that’s probably more personal than purely historic, so please excuse me if you’re looking for pure history. In my earlier blog Neolithic landscape of Dorset which was also a little bit ‘what I did on my holidays’, I looked at some small Neolithic sites starting with Long Bredy bank barrow. Now shown below in considerably better weather than back in April. This site was well worth a visit again as its actually far more imposing than it looks in the photo, a large bank with a ditch (on the right side of that photo) that is very well defined when standing in it. The trouble with dry grass against dry grass is its hard to distinguish features from my photo camera photos, shown below are actually two round barrows (described on the OS map as tumulus) ...

I accidentally hit ‘back’ on a post about growing cloud forest orchids through a heat wave and can’t be bothered to re-write it. So instead - have a freaky little cloud forest orchid that is making it through. Pleurothallis tribuloides Native to Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean. Grows in wet forests at elevations of 300 to 1300 meters. Described as a cool to hot grower which I suppose means its not fussy. Mine is grown mounted, in the same grow tent as my other cloud forest species so suffering from the crazy temperatures this year but 80+% humidity with constant air movement.

The Nailmakers of Halesowen Yo’ gets a piece of wire, Yo’ puts in in the fire, Yo’ teks it out, Yo’ giz it a clout, Yo’ yods it, Yo’ got a nayul. I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs that whilst I now live in and write about Worcestershire, I grew up over the border in the West Midlands in an area known as the Black Country1 specifically the town of Halesowen. The town itself was once upon-a-time part of the historic county of Worcestershire, but become part of the West Midlands county designation in 1974 (before my time). Halesowen naturally is where I started getting interested in local history a bit, then I buggered off to live a life in London before returning as a much older adult and again starting to research history of the surrounds where I lived at the time and now Worcestershire. ...

Time for an update on the orchids. I wrote previously here about my modern take on orchid growing and its one of the things I keep wishing to share with the indifferent internet, so here we go. First off - the big cool cloud forest grow tent. Now pretty much this got a bit neglected and I missed the fact things were suffering for a little while. Its too crowded and things were getting too much light so I’ve moved things around a bit which has helped. Then we had a week of insane temperatures. I then went on holiday and left them in the care of my plant sitter… I think she watered them, but they need some general tlc in the next few weeks. I need to remove some of the duplicates and throw them in the recycling1. That will free up some space. Then whatever is left probably needs multiple re-pots and shocking no-one I will then buy more plants. ...

Battle of the river Teme (Leominster canal and WW2 shenanigans) I wrote in a previous blog The bridge of a million bricks about the Leominster Canal and its total lack of success in construction. I also mentioned in passing about one of its other aquaducts being blown up. This is the result of some further investigation and a nice little visit to take the pictures. Anyone interested in more history on the Leominster canal should check out my previous blog (above) and the lovely Friends of Leominster canal. ...

I’m developing a deeper appreciation of the small web, so deciding to put my head above the parapet and actually participate which isn’t always an easy thing for me. I’d been thinking for a long time about the internet, social media and how it changed the web I remember from about 1999-200? maybe up to about 2010 before social media really got a foot hold. Then a year ago on holiday, I spent a lot of time reading Kev Quirks blog and seeing a guy similar in employment, age and location (UK) to me, talking about the same stuff I was thinking about. Since then I’ve tried to spend less time on social media and more time reading and writing on the indie/small web. I’ve had blogs before, but usually ran into the problem of making them about 1 thing that interested me rather than a more general thing. This is my first ‘general’ blog - started with history then drifts a bit between whatever else I’m interested in, but mostly comes back to history as a means of writing up my notes, showing off pictures and generally looking at stuff that I find interesting. Maybe someone else out there will too and that surely is the aim. ...