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In this issue
Cover image
Back to Schooldays
Rowson's Comment
Around the Block
News in Brief
Stop the War
Mini-march
Lysistrata Day
Fringe Festival
Straight to the Point
Time to Finnish
Day in the Nick
Starting Over
Readers Letters
Herbal Cleansing
Local Music
Tripping Out
Tippling at the Tup
Property
Housing Matters
Very Testi
Art Happenings
Vietnamese Food
Entertainment
Gardening
Marathon Man
Surfing N16
Man in North Bank
Xword
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Local resident, historian and writer Lee Jackson must be
congratulated on his fantastic website about Victorian London. This is a real labour of
love and the site itself is simple and clean (maybe just a touch clinical). The site is a
dictionary of all aspects of life during the 19th century from Advertising to Words and
Expressions via the likes of: Childhood, Entertainment and Recreation, Maps, Religion, Sex
and the Weather. Each heading is then further broken down into subsections, so that it is
quickly possible to find what is available.
The entries themselves are often very detailed. This is because Lee has spent a huge
amount of time scanning complete Victorian books - I counted some 24 complete works and
thousands of quotations and extracts by many of the great Victorian writers. For example
Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens’s Dictionary of London (1879) contains a number of
references to Stoke Newington. Other works include Sinks of London Laid Open, Anon (1848),
The Terrible Sights of London, Thomas Archer (1870), and American author David W.Bartlett,
London by Day and Night (1852) which includes a visit he made to Stoke Newington.
Another title that had me engrossed for longer than I had planned was The Queen’s
London, published in 1896 by Cassell, with some 370 images from this one book alone -
although alas no images of good old Stokey. I am sure that Lee would agree that this is a
site that will never be complete; he has put thousands of man hours into the work, and
I’m sure that he already has plans to add even more. If you have any interest in
Victorian life, then this is a must see.
www.victorianlondon.org
While the Clissold Leisure Centre has yet to get its feet wet with a web site, two
independent sites have come to my attention. The first is www.clissoldleisure.com
with the wonderful sub title ‘local people unofficially serving local people –
with extreme prejudice’. It certainly does what it says on the tin, with plenty of
comment from the users of the centre. My only complaint is that the pages even on my
17" screen, spread well off the right-hand side of the screen. The web site builders
need to get their tables under control. With very little effort it could be visually a
much better site. Nevertheless, there are some wonderful pieces to read including notes by
N16’s regular columnist Ken Worpole.
My favourite has to be a wonderful Clissold Art Trail. I include just a small sample to
encourage you to visit the site:
The Gallery Tour 1
Brina Sweel takes us on a tour of the new Clissold art gallery part one - an arrival I had only ever heard of Stoke Newington from those property pages in the Sunday papers or from friends now living in the Dordogne worried about where their children were living while up at University.
So travelling so far off the beaten-track, it was adelight to find this hidden star of the art ‘firmament’ and feel like a true explorer. I was bowled over as I saw the delightful structure that, like its surroundings, so quickly made me think of foreign-travel and jetting away to far-away places.
What a clever idea of the architect to throw away the oh so tired vernacular of art galleries as we have come to know them and instead look to the modern airport or northern city conference-centre for inspiration...
The second site is another powered by ground-level. The Clissold Swimming
Club site provides information on what the club is up to. The club caters for all
abilities - from lessons for non-swimmers/beginners to a high standard of training for
squad/competitive swimmers through to masters. So if you fancy joining, just click onto http://clissoldswimmingclub.groundlevel.org/
.
After my comments about being driven up the wall by the planning web site at Hackney
Council (issue 15), the Council finally had to admit defeat. And a short while after my
comments, planning notices stopped giving the planning web site address. It took longer
for anything to happen actually on the web site.
Then in November, Hurrah, a page was put up, it read:
‘The Council is experiencing significant technical difficulties with its planning web site and for the foreseeable future it will not be possible to view or download site specific information. I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused and can assure you that officers are seeking to address the problem as quickly as possible. However, it may be some months before the service is resumed. We will update this message when we have a clearer idea about the timescale...’
 |
Local barber and Church Street institution Hamilton Fitzroy died recently. Helsinki clothes shop created a display, shown here, in his memory. |
The message went on that a simple weekly list by ward of planning
applications would be put on the site. Result, I though, but alas no: when I checked in
late March only four weekly reports were available, the last dated in February. Oh, by the
way a little dickey bird informed me that a major reason for the collapse of the service
was that when they where moving computers into new offices in Fortress Hackney, the server
which housed the planning web site was dropped. Oops. Bless.
P.S. The Council have at last got round to tarting up their site - worth a look, report in
the next issue.