Lappy games, junk mail and not eanough seats!

12 September 2013

My lappy is playing up a bit at the minute.  I keep getting error messages from Firefox and Word saying that they aren't responding - then they do but very slowly.  I'll see how it goes ... ... ...

We had eight pieces of mail this morning - but not one letter.  There was one of mine photo mags, one of Jan's crochet mags and all the rest was junk.  At one time I used to wait until we had a lot of it and then take the contents of one lot and stuff it into the freepost envelope of another one and so on until they had all been done.  Then the whole lot went back into the post.  For some reason they didn't like getting junk mail back to them because a lot of them now require stamps to be stuck on returning envelopes.  It's obvious they don't want junk mail; so why do they send it out in the first place then?

As I've mentioned before, my BA Hons is in history.  My main two periods are 1450-1600 Europe and 19th Century nonconformists.  In 1996 the church I was a member of held its 150th year anniversary and I wrote a short history of it.  The church borrowed a binding machine and published it ourselves.  It seemed to go down pretty well.  Even now I have a keen interest in the noncom churches in Dorktown.  There's a small Methodist church in Chapel End that has closed simply because of the fall in congregation numbers.  That particular building is interesting in itself though because it is round and the outside has some terracotta panels imported from Italy.  When it closed I was asked by a local heritage campaigner to get involved in trying to keep it open.  However, I fully understood why the decision was taken to close the place and so refused to get caught up in it. 

Some the congregation of that church moved up the road to Chapel End United Reformed Church.  Today's News carries the front page story that in January next year it too will close.  That closure brings an end to 200 years of worship on that site.  They had no choice though.  The building needs extensive renovations and a new heating system; there is no way that the congregation of around 14 would ever be able to meet the costs.  And so another church closes.

A few months ago I saw an ad for the sale of another church building on Heath End Road.  It's still there I think but again it was a falling and aged congregation that caused the church to close its doors.  Years ago there was a place called Edward Street Mission, part of the Anglican church.  That also closed, was bought and renovated and is now owned and used by the local Muslims. 

As I've travelled around the UK I've noticed that more and more churches have closed and are now used as commercial outlets or turned into housing.  Britain is supposed to be a Christian country but in reality it ever was or has been for hundreds of years.  In 1850 a census of church was under taken by the Anglican Church and various other denominations as well.  A shock was in store for the organiser when they found that just on 50% of the population attended church on Census Day.  A bigger shock for the Anglican Church was that less than 50% of those who attended church had attended their local parish church. 

About the same time as the Censor it was thought that if for any reason every person in England turned up to church on the same day, there wasn't enough seats in the current churches.  That seemed to start a large church building project and I think that with many of the churches that close now, it's some of those newly built churches.  Whatever, if there wasn't seats in the 19th Century, just think about how short of seating there would today!

Today's photo then can hardly be anything else can it ... 

Manor Court Baptist Church, the church I did the history for.

And a funny ...

                   

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, French scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 200 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 150 years ago.
Not to be outdone by the French: in the weeks that followed, American archaeologists dug to a depth of 20 feet before finding traces of copper wire. Shortly afterwards, they published an article in the New York Times saying : "American archaeologists, having found traces of 250-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 50 years earlier than the French."
A few weeks later, ‘The British Archaeological Society of Northern England’ reported the following: "After digging down to a depth of 33 feet in the Skipton area of North Yorkshire in 2011, Charlie Hardcastle, a self-taught amateur archaeologist, reported that he had found absolutely *Another nothing at all. Charlie has therefore concluded that 250 years ago, Britain had already gone wireless."