Share your Mechanics’ Memories For decades the Mechanics’ building was at the centre of the community. But today it stands empty. Many Swindonians have fond memories of time spent with friends and family in the building, from first dates and theatre performances to ping pong and dancing! Sadly, some have only ever known it covered in weeds and scaffolding.
We’ll display these Mechanics’ Memories on 11th and 12th September around the building.
So, join us in the village on the day to write your memory label. Or send a short email to helen@mechanics-trust.org.ukand we’ll add it to the display.
NB: Although we’ll make these memories public we will never disclose your personal details without permission.
But what a lovely way to share your Mechanics’ memories.
Mechanics’ Institution newsletters
If you missed the recent newsletters from the Mechanics’ Institution Trust find links to them below:
Recently, meandering round town with a Federation of Small Businesses colleague, Ruth Lambert, we chanced upon The Drink Valley– sounds good right? Well it is. There’s a good selection of beers some of which I doubt you’d find in the supermarket.
Though I’m largely a wine drinker, I’m partial to a drop of beer too. And have been since I was a little girl – I blame my grandad. From my being a young age he gave me brown ale and stout to sample!
So anyway, scanning the shelves for something different to try, my eyes alighted on the Hercule Stout. Being a lover of Agatha Christie, feeling that David Suchet was the definitive Poirot and being partial to a drop of brown ale AND Belgian beer, I plumped for it.
‘Considered a world classic, this beer is named after the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. The brewery makes the brewery in small batches and lagers it for ten days in German oak casks. Many beer drinkers regard the Hercule beer as a classic. It’s very malty, yet dry, with a hint of sweetness in its finish. Further, it’s perfectly hopped.
It carries a distinctive and intoxicating spicy scent of fresh spruce. A scent that fills the room when you release the swing top.
It’s likely that its unique character comes from the strains of yeast that the brewery, the Brasseries des Legends, uses. And possibly from the fermentation in oak. And because the beer is made from malt and hops with no spices or sugar.’
Well – I don’t know about a lot of that. But I can say the top made a most satisfying ‘sigh’ when I opened it. And it’s delicious!
‘ … The shop is run by brewer Dhiraj Pujari and his wife Deepali and stocks over 150 different beers, ciders, wines and spirits including locally-produced drinks as well as beverages from national and international artisans.
Dhiraj has worked in the brewing industry for 11 years and has an MSc in Brewing and Distilling. His intention is to also run a Craft Beer Bar in the shop but due to the current pandemic he has had to put these plans on ice for the time-being. Instead Dhiraj and Deepali are concentrating on building up the business from their Canal Walk shop which now stocks an extensive range of beverages, including low-alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks. Next month they will be introducing a same-day delivery service for Swindon customers plus next-day UK deliveries. ..’
Unmemorable Dinosaura of Wiltshire by by Rebecca Davies BSc. (Hons)
(With much thanks to Christopher Tanfield of St Laurence’s church, Bradford on Avon, for suggesting this title).
Before I get to uploading Rebecca’s words on the Unmemorable Dinosaura of Wiltshire – it made me smile did this. Though I’m not sure what my dinosaur barmy, budding palaeontologist, 4-year old granddaughter would make of it. I have told her about the Swindon stegosaur at the Natural History museum. It’s the first stegosaur specimen to be so described.
The specimen you see in the cabinet in the picture below (in the Natural History Museum in London) is a Dacentrurus – a type of Stegosaur. Whereas a stegosaurus is a different kind of Stegosaur.
Stegosaur hierarchyThe Swindon stegosaur in the Natural History museum in London – the thing in the case not the lady stood by it! That’s Cllr Strinkovsky.
In the YouTube film below Palaeontologist Prof Paul Barrett shows science communicator Dr Nick Crumpton the Museum’s Dacentrurus specimen, the first stegosaur specimen to be described.
And it was found in Swindon! Pretty cool huh?Swindon Stegosaur info in Museum and Art Swindon
The Angel Ridge play area, on the site of the old PMH, references the ichthyosaur found nearby. It featured on Blue Peter – no greater accolade surely?
So that’s a round-up of some of Swindon’s memorable dinosaura. Now onto Rebecca’s wry and and amusing tale of Unmemorable Dinosaura of Wiltshire.
Introduction
This article is about something different, for Angela told me about Wiltshire dinosaura. Something new to me I must admit.
So, your intrepid researcher is now hunting Dinosaura in Swindon and Wiltshire. Where will I find any? Not at all sure what to do, I went to the park. Ah! I see some already! What luck!
Great BustardMallardsRookRoosterRobini
I had a look through my old photographs and picked out some more birds. This is Sulis Sgeir, the Rock of the Gannets. If you ever lose faith in life, go visit a Gannetry, they are so full of life and action.
Sulis Sgeir
It’s said that the dinosaura are the dominant life-form of the world – apart from ants and bloggers that is. I certainly have found loads!
And now I am hungry – dinosaura are very good eating! I think I am doing quite well, don’t you think?
Harrumph! Angela is not satisfied with my very productive research, Well, as it turns out the Dinosaura I am supposed to be looking for are old fashioned ones, not modern ones. What did she expect?
Now I know. I was so looking forwards to eating one too. I said I was an archaeologist and not a palaeontologist, didn’t I? Never mind. I have to look in what we call the Age of Reptiles.
The age of reptiles
The Mesozoic period was from 252 to 66 million years ago and was divided into three sub periods:
The climate was hot and dry but then sometimes hot and wet. This was the period in which the supercontinent of Pangea broke up into the present day continents, which drifted to their present positions. The plants were gymnosperms like tree ferns, conifers and ginkgo’s, but flowering plants evolved later.
GinkgoScots Pine
It was in this period that reptiles diversified into many storied lineages. There were the Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs in the sea and the Pterosaurs in the skies. But most of all there were the Dinosaura.
Mammals had evolved too, but until the end of this period, remained small and insignificant.
Wiltshire geology
A quick look at the geological map shows that the geology of Wiltshire is almost all of the Mesozoic period. Only the alluvial gravels of the Upper Thames and my Sarsen Stones on the Downs are much younger. We are saved. And I, with a bit of searching, have found some old fashioned Dinosaura!
So,Ipresent to you some unmemorable Dinosaura I found in Wiltshire.
Dacentrurus
Dacentrurus comes from Swindon, from the in the Kimmeridge clay to be precise. This is a small member of the Stegosaur family, possibly one of the most visually appealing of all dinosaura.
Jacquetta Hawkes in her meditative book of British landscape, A Land, describes Stegosaurus as: A childlike scholar who has lost his wits, and having hung himself with pot lids and tea trays in order to protect himself from his critics, strays though life sipping crème de menthe and eating ice cream. It would be a fine thing to see a life-sized statue of this singular creature, made strong enough to withstand children climbing on it, as they invariably will do, Stegosaurus being an ideal climbing frame.
Cardiodon Rugulosus
Sauropods are the really huge ones, the largest land animals to have ever lived, and ones just as big as the hugest whales. Unfortunately, like most dinosaura from Wiltshire the fossils are fragmentary and so we can find out very little about it.
Megalosaurus Nethercombenis
Megalosaurus Nethercombensis
This is a dinosaur much more familiar. It is a therapod, and so a close relative of my bird friends. But did they have feathers? Some dinosaurs have feathered remains, some don’t, but bear close relation to those known to have had feathers. And so it’s reasonable to assume that they too had a fluffy coat.
Nuthetes Destructor
Nuthetes destructor
Another Theropod, this one much smaller. Being close to birds, many theropods would have had feathers evolve for insulation, sexual display and eventually flight. Thermoregulation is harder in small animals than it is in large, so a rough rule of thumb; big therapods naked, small ones feathery. Of course, some big therapods may have had a temporary cover of down when very young.
Polacanthus
Now this dinosaur certainly did not have feathers. Rather, this family are famed for their armour. Indeed some mummified specimens have been found, giving us an unprecedented understanding of their anatomy.
Conclusion
Wiltshire never ceases to surprise me. While not as well-known for its prehistoric life, like the Isle of Wight for instance, it still has an interesting variety of fossils. Mostly marine life but also some from on land. All of which begs the question – what will I discover next? Meanwhile – back to KFC – all this dinosaur exploration has made me hungry again.
All pictures, even the drawings, are by me, the author. Ditto any stupid mistakes.
Bibliography
A Land, Jacquetta Hawkes, Readers Union 1951.
Feathered Dinosaurs; the Origin of birds, John Long and Peter Shouten, OUP 2009
Hidden Depths, Wiltshire’s Geology and Landscapes, Isobel Geddes, Ex Libris Press 2000
If you hold the belief that ‘fall’ is an American barbarism might want to think again. As this online etymology dictionary points out ‘fall’ (in simple terms) comes from the Old English ‘feallan’, past tense ‘feoll’, past participle ‘feallen’ – meaning to drop from a height; fail, decay or die.
The term, like the English settlers, spread to the new World where it’s still used today. Here in Britain however, the word ‘fall’ fell out of favour to be replaced in British English by ‘autumn’.
So, despite what you may have thought, and as grammarist.com points out: ‘while widely used in the US it’s neither exclusively American nor American in origin.’
So there you have it. Like the leaves, another possible preconception bites the dust.
Possibly even older than the term ‘fall’ is ‘autumn’. Seemingly first used by Chaucer c 1374 the word ‘autumn’ is apparently derived from the Latin autumnus/auctumnus. Though others would say its etymology is unclear.
Whatever your feelings about all of that, I rather like this blog post’s suggestion that ‘fall’ makes a neat foil to its opposite number ‘spring’ and gives us the helpful prompt: ‘Spring ahead, fall back’.
Hold on, man. We don’t go anywhere with “scary,” “spooky,” “haunted,” or “forbidden” in the title
From Scooby Doo!
Trick or Treat? A Halloween history Here I am with a bit more linguistic debunking – with some customs and traditions thrown in for good measure. This time regarding Halloween and Trick or Treat?
It amuses, perplexes and irritates me, in pretty much equal measure, that so much is assumed to be an American import. But if you stop to think about it for a moment – how do you suppose so many words and customs and foods got there in the first place?
If a ‘thing’ wasn’t part of the culture of the indigenous population then whatever it might be obviously got there via the multitude of migrant groups that have pitched up on the shores of the Land of the Free – the Germans, Italians, the Dutch and, of course, we Brits. And so it is with Halloween.
Yes! That’s right. Far from being an American export to US – it’s actually an import from the British to America.
All Hallow’s Eve
Halloween is more correctly written as ‘Hallowe’en. That being a contraction of ‘All Hallows’ Eve’ or All Saints Eve – a yearly celebration observed in many countries on the eve of All Hallows Day – the 1st November.
We dedicate All Hallows day to remembering the dead including saints (the Hallows), martyrs and all the faithful departed Christian believers.
Some scholars think that All Hallows’ Eve is a Christianized festival influence by Celtic Harvest festivals, possibly with pagan roots – particularly the Gaelic Samhain.
How did Hallowe’en become popular in America?
Due to America’s strong Christian heritage, Halloween didn’t enjoy wide observance until the 20th century. And even then, only in small Irish Catholic settlements.
It wasn’t until the potato famine sent thousands of Irish migrating to America taking their customs with them that the festival took hold. So we can argue that, to some degree, the modern Halloween is an Irish holiday with early origins in the Celtic winter festival.
Hit the road Jack
The Jack-0’lantern – or the carved out pumpkin to you and me – could have originated with the witches’ use of a collection of skulls with a candle in each to light the way to coven meetings.
But among the Irish, who, as already mentioned, prompted the popularization of Halloween in America, the legend of “Irish Jack” or “stingy Jack” explains the jack-o’-lantern.
According to legend, a stingy drunk named Jack tricked the devil into climbing an apple tree for a piece of the fruit. But then he cut the sign of a cross into the trunk of the tree to prevent the devil from coming down. Jack then forced the devil to swear he would never come after Jack’s soul. The devil reluctantly agreed.
When Jack died he found himself turned away at the gates of heaven because of his drunkenness and life of selfishness. He was sent to the devil who also rejected him, keeping his promise.
Since Jack had no place to go, he was condemned to wander the earth. As he was leaving hell (he happened to be eating a turnip), the devil threw a live coal at him. He put the coal inside the turnip. And has, since then, roamed the earth with his “jack-o’-lantern” in search of a place to rest.
At length, pumpkins replaced turnips for the lanterns. For the good reason that they’re much easier to hollow out and to carve. Symbolizing the devil’s coal is a whole lot easier with a pumpkin. And they make great pies. And soup. I’m not sure the same can be said of turnip.
Trick or treat?!
You think that the trick or treat custom has come from America? Well sort of yes – but its origins are closer to home.
A long tradition of going from door to for food existed in Great Britain and Ireland in the form of ‘souling’ – where children and the poor sang and said prayers for the dead in return for cakes. n Scotland an activity known as ‘guising’ – children disguised in costumes going from door to door for food and coins – also predates Trick or Treat.
Guising is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1865 where masqueraders in disguise and carrying lanterns made from scooped out turnips visited homes to get cakes, fruit and money. While going from door-to-door in disguise remains popular among the Scots and the Irish, the custom of saying ‘Trick or Treat’ is relatively new. It probably dates roughly from 1930s America.
There exists a theory that the trick or treat practice evolved as an antidote for the increasingly rowdy and costly Halloween pranks. The idea being, that it provided a healthier activity for the young giving them an incentive not to play tricks. For sure the festival has morphed into a brilliant commercial opportunity for sweet and chocolate manufacturers.
Getting out the dressing up box
The tradition of dressing in costumes and trick-or-treating may well go back to the practice of “mumming” and “guising,” Early costumes were usually disguises, often woven out of straw, and sometimes people wore costumes to perform in plays or skits.
The practice may also be related to the medieval custom of “souling” in Britain and Ireland. With this, poor people would knock on doors on Hallowmas (Nov. 1), asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead. No doubt Claire’s Accessories and any fancy dress shop you care to think of will be glad of the longevity of this tradition.
