We went on an expedition to the Isle of Grain, the nondescript, but unexpectedly atmospheric peninsula which juts out into the Thames Estuary north of Rochester, full of flat farmland until one comes to a massive Electricity generating station and oil refinery before a village street which leads on past the parish church to a view across the Thames to Southend-on-Sea:-
In the middle of the mouth of the River Medway is Grain Tower, a fortification built by Palmerston to protect the dock yards of Chatham and Sheerness:-
It was a strange and romantic industrial landscape:-
Dear Charles, These are lovely.
I am sorting through papers today and came across a cutting from the eighth of June 1977 which advertised from 8.10-8.30 on BBC2 a programme called “In the Making – A visit to the Whitechapel Ball Foundry where some of the most famous bells in the world have been made.” Since I didn’t have a television at the time I would not have seen it and I wonder if the programme was ever telecined and archived. Do you know of it?
Dear Leslie, How fascinating ! Most of the documentary material about the Bell Foundry is is in London Metropolitan Archives which re-opens tomorrow. I might try them. Charles