Ball of Confusion

Getting a feel for micro.blog. No likes, hashtags, reposts, follow/er counts, limited search. Low pressure environment. All good.

I’m indifferent to most of the London Grammar remixes but the Hey Now remix by French duo The Shoes adds something worthwhile. 🎵

And also from yesterday, the archetypal beach view looking towards West Kirby and Hoylake with Hilbre Island to the left. It gets sandier further on but this is good to walk on. Birds were starting to fly in as the tide turned, mainly oystercatchers, redshank joining the loitering gulls. Lots of cliff erosion evident. 📷

From yesterday, a favourite view looking down the footpath from the Wirral Way to Heswall Field, Welsh hills in the distance. 📷

And the Olympics start today with men’s soccer and rugby sevens.

BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/sport/oly… Olympics Schedule - Paris 2024 day-by-day guide of events

Christina Pagel’s first thoughts on the Hallett Report on UK response to Covid-19, module 1. There really hasn’t been a lot of informed comment that I’ve seen thus far so this is welcome.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/covid-i…

Fair number of butterflies on the path down to Heswall Field from the Wirral Way, notably Large White, Gatekeeper and Comma (shown here). 📷

Delightful walk along the beach at Thurstaston followed by coffee and scone at the visitors centre with view of Wales across the Dee estuary. 📷

Some of the #athletics highlights at the forthcoming Olympics.

BBC News - Athletics stars, rivalries & key events at Paris 2024 www.bbc.com/sport/ath…

Came across a new non-Linden viewer (well, new to me) still under development but visually rather impressive judging by the video. Mind you, I’ve seen a few viewers come and go so I’m not getting too excited yet. That said, all best wishes to the Sharpview dev.

www.animats.com/sharpview…

A slightly overcast day with a very fine mizzle at times. A good perambulation, ducks on the mere fed, now on with the rest of the day. 📷

The soundtrack of the last week or so has come courtesy of London Grammar. As ever, I’m late to the party but making up for lost time is part of the fun. 🎵

My first impression is that the tone on micro.blog is generally more positive and less sarcastic. I like that. There’s also less on politics and health-related issues. I’m going to try and fit in with that.

Getting back to micro.blog after pulling the plug on my Mastodon instance. History suggests I’m not very good at being in more than one space at a time so let’s see how I fare here now I can focus. May take a while to get up to speed.

Boo!

Pleasant walk in Birkenhead Upper Park. Coot busy feeding its young on the lake.

The last couple of weekends we went to Calderstones Park on the outskirts of Liverpool. It has wonderful tree-lined walks, beautiful gardens and, now the Mansion House has been transformed, a very nice cafe. I’m going to call the Mansion House the Hall

Not enough on TV+ to keep me hooked at present. I’ve enjoyed much of what I’ve seen and will miss the end of Sugar and Big Door Prize but overall no regrets and may well come back again as and when. 📺

Finished binge-watching the first three seasons of New Amsterdam. The coverage of the pandemic from the perspective of a hospital soap set in NY was both interesting and chilling. While I enjoyed most of the episodes, the synopses on wiki for the following two seasons didn’t engage me so I made do with the final episode to see how it all ended.

Liking Kagi’s ability to summarise and query YT videos

Watching Suspicion on AppleTV+. Nice and twisty, think I’ll stay with it. 📺

I first wrote this account in 2018 on the build2understand blog on 10centuries.org under the nom de plume ed3d. This version has not been further updated as yet. The markdown support also varies between platforms so there may be issues that need fixing. Please bear with me.

The Huskisson memorial at Parkside marks the scene of the fatal injury to Liverpool MP William Huskisson during the inaugural run of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&MR) on 15th September 1830. It will be familiar to passengers on the Liverpool and Manchester line as a small building on the southern slope of the cutting just east of the A573 Parkside Road. Historic England describes it as grade II listed and as being in the form of a “simplified Classical temple” of painted stone. The date is given as 1831 but the story is probably a little more complex than this suggests. As ever, this is a working hypothesis, not a work of reference.

The tablet

The memorial contains a tablet inscribed with a text of gravity and pathos appropriate to the time. The present tablet is a copy of one vandalised in 1990 and replaced in 2001. There is a second copy at Newton-le-Willows railway station (shown above) and the vandalised version, suitably restored, is now in the National Railway Museum at York. However, that is not the original tablet.

The original tablet was placed at Parkside in May 1831 but there is no mention of this in the standard texts although its presence is recorded without details in a memoir on Huskisson published in 1831. Given its location it was presumably a mark of respect paid by the railway company on behalf of its staff, directors and shareholders. Huskisson played a pivotal role in guiding the enabling legislation through Parliament which made his death on the opening day doubly tragic.

The author of the single, very long sentence on the tablet is unknown. A printed copy is among the papers of director Charles Lawrence relating to Huskisson and there may be further information in that archive.

However, this first tablet was destroyed in the winter of 1837/8 due to frost damage causing the bank to which it was fixed to press heavily against it. It would seem therefore that the tablet at that time was fixed directly to the rock of the embankment. The railway company funded a replacement in 1838. Roscoe’s 1839 Book of the Grand Junction Railway mentions “a marble slab fixed in the wall at this station is the sad memorial of it”.

Measom’s 1859 Illustrated Guide to the Northwestern Railway mentions a monument to Huskisson at Parkside but gives no details.

We next hear of the tablet in a report dated September 14 1880 in the Manchester Guardian which describes the tablet as being “between two buttresses that support an iron water tank”. This does not sound like a classical temple in miniature. Rather, the buttresses may have been the buildings housing the watering station, probably a boiler and an engine for pumping. Maps suggest the structure may have been largely intact in the 1880s but to have shrunk to something like its present dimensions by the 1920s.

The watering station

The structure features in two editions of a print by Thomas Talbot Bury that are distinguished by the presence of a chimney on the eastern block and a shed for a relief locomotive just beyond. In both editions the gap between the two end blocks (or buttresses) is mostly rock with just a single course of stone. Indeed, three people can be seen in front of the putative tablet location as if looking at it. An 1837 edition of a guidebook to the Grand Junction Railway (which ran from Birmingham and thence to Liverpool and Manchester on L&MR track) suggested that there was also a rail that pointed to the exact spot where the accident occurred.

The structure can also be seen under construction in a sketch by Isaac Shaw as well as in his print of a goods train. In the former case we can see a plausible water tank on the ground with probable stonework in place of much of Bury’s rock (which might, however, be obscured). The print of the goods train shows the structure in an earlier guise without a chimney, the mid-region still largely masonry (but again part-obscured), and the water tank now raised into position.

It seems feasible therefore that the tablet was fixed first to the rock and then in 1838, slightly higher, to the masonry. The 7-month delay in mounting the tablet in the first place may then be ascribed to the construction of the watering station during 1831. The somewhat peculiar incorporation of the rock into the watering station may have been for reasons of economy. Alternatively, it may have been intended as part of the setting for the memorial tablet, possibly referencing the much cruder station of the tragic opening day. The use of stone facings (if such they were) seems to accord the watering station a higher status than might otherwise be merited although trains did, of course, pause here.

Intermediate watering stations became less of an issue as technology developed and for long distance routes water troughs were provided between the lines as at Eccles. The station itself closed to passengers in 1839 when a second station opened at a nearby junction with the Wigan branchline, the original facility continuing for some years as a goods station.

The only direct reference to the tablet from around this time comes in the LNWR guide of 1894 which briefly mentions that the MP was commemorated by “a tablet on an adjoining wall”.

The twentieth century

There is no indication that the original tablet was situated in a small temple and when this was added is unclear although I suspect others will know. Wikipedia has a photograph (above) showing a ceremony in front of the structure substantially as we see it today. This may have marked a rebuilding around part or all the water tank given that the tablet is now fixed to a metallic surface in an appropriate position. Note the rock face still present at track level. The date for this new development can only be judged on the basis of the image labels, 1913 seeming not unlikely given the dress of those present at the ceremony and the photographic equipment to hand. Perhaps an additional incentive behind the redevelopment was the need to remove dilapidated and unsafe old buildings or to close the goods station.

As mentioned previously, the memorial briefly hit the headlines when the (second) tablet was vandalised. While it features occasionally on TV (recently, for example, on Dan Snow’s railway history series), it seems to be very difficult to view except from a stationary train.

OpenSim build

In the 1880s it is possible that the buildings of the watering station were still present even if no longer used. Maps suggest that the engine shed formerly east of the watering station is now to the west with a possible goods shed occupying its original location. There is an additional building abutting the east flank of the boiler house, presumably the reason for the asymmetric nature of the low brick walls that encompass the contemporary memorial.

The historic context

Huskisson’s death cast a shadow over the opening day and understandably dominated coverage in the newspapers. Although permission was reluctantly granted to inter Huskisson’s remains in Liverpool (his home was in Chichester), the mausoleum by John Foster Jnr in St James’s Cemetery was not finished until 1834. While it doubtless contributed to the public subscription for the mausoleum, the company may have felt it was appropriate to make a gesture of its own in the meantime once the watering station was in place. The provenance of the miniature temple remains obscure and surprisingly unremarked given its more recent origin.

I first wrote this account in 2017 on the build2understand blog on Silvrback under the nom de plume ed3d. This version has not been further updated as yet. The markdown support also varies between platforms so there may be issues that need fixing. Please bear with me.

On the opening day of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in September 1830 there was a special running of eight trains to and from Manchester with the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, in a train pulled by the locomotive Northumbrian. This was the newest engine and ran on the southern track so that it could stop at will and also act as a static base for review of the other trains as they passed. Unfortunately the stop at Parkside to review and water the engines was marked by a severe and ultimately fatal injury to William Huskisson MP when he was knocked down and run over by Rocket.

The list

For an event that commanded national attention there is a surprising degree of uncertainty about aspects of the opening day so the posting of a partial passenger list in a blog by a SIM Manchester author is of some interest. The blog suggests that there is no indication of the train to which passengers were assigned (Thomas, 1980, provides a longer consolidated list but again without assignment). It is, however, headed “No.1” and with the Prime Minister among those listed it seems plausible that this is a list of those accompanying the Prime Minister in the ducal carriage.

Another intriguing feature is the numbering which, I would argue, may reflect a seating plan. Suggestive evidence for this is the otherwise arbitrary placing of Mrs Arbuthnot, Wellington’s close friend and confidante, adjacent to the Prime Minister in the list.

Moreover, the list as presented is divided into two halves, 1-24 and 25-40. Assuming the structure is replicated in the original document, this may reflect the seating provision in the ducal carriage. Those named in the first part of the list would be seated on four benches, six per bench, running round the sides of the coach and those named in the second seated on two ottomans running the length of the coach, eight per ottoman seated back-to-back.

Various sources suggest that Wellington was situated at the front of the ducal carriage, presumably at the end of the ottoman. In Shaw’s sketch and print he can probably be identified as the individual at the front of the large 8-wheeler carriage who has a large nose and is raising his hat.

There is another useful constraint, namely that Huskisson and Wellington (who might reasonably be felt to harbour a mutual grudge), were unable to communicate directly until Huskisson debarked at Parkside and walked around to the front of the carriage. It may be that Shaw shows Huskisson as the man standing towards the rear of the train. It is notable how few of the 40 passengers Shaw manages to depict from the relatively acute angle and how the preponderence of those is female, almost as if he wanted the viewer to focus on the two males whose faces are readily visible.

The ducal carriage was primarily occupied by dignitaries, mostly aristocrats, ambassadors and politicians, with their wives and daughters sitting on the ottoman. In some early pictures the ottoman is in two halves and this arrangement is adopted here. A second print by an unknown, possibly amateur, artist gives a better feel for this arrangement with the duke (in the cloak) shown at the front, men primarily down the sides and women behind them on the central ottomans.

The seating plan

With the possible exceptions of Wellington and Mrs Arbuthnot, the positions are hypothetical and based solely on consecutive numbering. They do, however, position Mr Arbuthnot close to his wife (for propriety) and the Dacres, Belgraves, Salisburys, Huskissons, Delameres and Stanleys are either adjacent to or relatively close to family members. The concentration of women on the inside (the widowed Lady Glengall is an exception) may have reflected a wish to shield their clothes from smuts and cinders.

Assuming she remained seated at Parkside, Mrs Huskisson would not have seen the accident that took place on the other side of the carriage. Those seated by Wellington on the other side are primarily politicians. Lord Wilton’s proximity to Wellington may be due to his acting as a guide. Indeed, the proposed addition of Mrs Moss and Mrs Lawrence may have been intended to serve a similar purpose as well as fill gaps.

The identity of most of those present is clear with one exception, Miss Long (Thomas calls her Hon. Miss Long). One possibility is that she is a daughter of Hon. William Long Wellesley. At the time she would have been a ward of the duchess of Wellington so it is possible that she accompanied the duke though is seated here with young women of similar status.

OpenSim build

A quick build suggests that the seating plan just about works based on 0.5x0.5 m per seat. Of course, those at the ends of the ottoman such as the duke can sit in either front-facing or sideways orientation. He can also make himself readily visible to crowds and passing trains.

While passing space in the aisles may be at a premium (as in a theatre), there are useful spaces at either end and the middle for socialising.

Not acounted for

The radical lawyer-turned-Whig politician Henry Brougham, later Lord Brougham and Vaux, was a supporter of the 1825 Railway Bill and earlier in 1812 had stood unsuccessfully against Canning for one of the Liverpool seats in Parliament. An ardent supporter of technical education for the working and artisan classes, in 1825 he opened the Liverpool Mechanics' Institute which was supported by many of the L&MR directors.

His memoirs make it clear that he was hoping to talk to Huskisson at Liverpool about a possible return to politics in conjunction with William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne, however, was unable to attend the opening as he was recovering from an operation on a carbuncle.

As he was well known to the directors, it may be that Brougham travelled with them rather than in the ducal carriage.

Conclusion

Further research is required to compare the list with those who actually travelled on the day (some substitutions have already been made). The motivation underpinning any seating plan may be of interest if it reflects the wishes of the directors to promote the railway or reward its supporters. The preponderance of males around the circumference may, however, simply reflect a wish to protect female dresses from smuts and embers emitted by the engine.

Further understanding of the composition and arrangement of the passengers in this carriage may be assisted by analysis of published diaries. Such were the numbers of dignitaries travelling that day that their absence from the ducal carriage is also a subject of interest.

handy tool for converting a web page to markdown urltomarkdown.com

Well, after my gentle criticism of Masters of the Air, this week’s episode moved in exactly the right direction. 📺