BUILDING BLOCKS

 If you walk down the high street of Manningtree at the moment, you'll see this, part of a 

building that's being worked on:

 

It’s a door marked for wheelchair users that’s about a foot off the ground – no ramp, no lift. Getting in of course is impossible, but getting out would be a wild ride.  The door opens, the wheelchair passes through and the occupant is (briefly) airborne.

 

I don’t honestly think this is a Thomasson – i.e. a surviving architectural relic that serves no purpose but by some kind of alchemy has become a work of art, or hyperart.

 

Nah, I think the guys working on the building just needed a door, any door, to plug up the hole and the one they found happened to have a wheelchair sticker on it. And maybe one of the guys likes a larf. I expect it’ll soon be gone.

 

If you happen to be walking in Ipswich, up in the next county, you might come across this place:

 

It’s closed up and one of the doors is bricked up, and again not a Thomasson, just a way of securely plugging a hole. But what really catches the eye is that belt arrangement that appears to be holding the house together. 

 I’m sure there must be a technical architectural term for those belts, and perhaps it’s a tried and trusted method.  Even so, the house owner, and the builder, evidently have more confidence in the belt materials than I would have, especially if I lived in the house next door.

OBELISK FINDER GENERAL

I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason.  I believe that most things happen for no reason whatsoever. And I don’t believe that life brings you what you need.  And yet and yet ...  

I currently find myself billeted (for reasons that make more sense some days than others) in Manningtree in Essex. That’s where Matthew Hopkins, aka the ‘Witchfinder General,’ did some of his best work.  Funny thing about witch hunts – they always find lots of witches.  He did look at least somewhat like Vincent Price who played him in the movie.

 Quite independently, and before I moved here, I had developed an interest in obelisks.  Now I discover this area is strangely well-supplied with obelisks.

If you start somewhat to the east of Manningtree you’ll find the Mistley Towers, op cit, quite the folly landmark, but rather more intriguingly from my point of view it’s also the site of the obelisk commemorating Jean Death, a hard name to live with.  

In fact there’s a bakery in Manningtree called the De’aths Bakery, so presumably there’s some connection, and something for me to investigate.

If you go into Manningtree from Mistley and walk up the hill to the Trinity Free Church, you’ll find a churchyard which looks rather older than the church, and in there you’ll find a couple more obelisks, small, discreet, unspectacular and all the more appealing for that.

And then last weekend, I walked to Cattawade, part of which I’d often seen from the train heading up into Suffolk, and I’d spotted some fine industrial ruins; ICI, Ilford films, Xylonite, as I now know.  Part of the area was once known as Highams Park. Some say that Margaret Thatcher worked for Xylonite at this location, but others say she worked up in Lawton – more research needed there too.

Most of the Cattawade site has been demolished or left to collapse, which was why I was there, but (need I say) I discovered an obelisk.

In fact it's a war memorial that used to be in the grounds of the now absent ICI compound.

At one time it had obviously had commemorative metal plaques attached to it, but they’ve been removed for safe keeping, and so the stone has become a canvas for some profoundly unambitious taggers. Couldn’t any self-respecting street artist do wonders with an obelisk? This one’s in Lincoln County Oklahoma (pic by MJ Alexander, I believe).