Achtung, eine Deutsche Kirche!

Already it is my last day for this week! I really hope I can come back to do more work later in the holiday. For a start I'd be able to see more cool quirky places in London, such as St Boniface german church near Aldgate. The church, called so after the fantastically named Saint Wynfred Boniface, holds an important if unusual role in London as it is the central meeting point for the capital's catholic German community. This was a particularly interesting visit as it involved a tour of the church for the exploratory's Senior 'BEE' members, a large group of elder, expert enthusiasts. Immediately they bombarded the German parish priest Chris a multitude of questions about the church and we discovered that it was once a riding school rebuilt into a church, which then collapsed and was replaced by another building, which was ironically destroyed in the blitz. The current building is surprisingly nice for something that was built in the sixties. Chris stood up to the scrutiny well, cracking a few good jokes along the way, and proving that Germans do of course have a sense of humor! The BEE's left with a valuable insight into the unseen history of London's different ethnic communities. We then went for some obligatory tea and biscuits at the whitechapel gallery meeting room. Despite me nearly dropping the tray, we had a good chat and found out plenty about where the BEEs would like to visit later in the year, all the while enjoying the rather strange art exhibits of a collection of unwanted tea mugs and an elaborate water dispenser. (These are actual art installations by the way, not some kind of misfiring joke by me!) At the end of the day there was some time to enjoy a walk around the city and look at some of the many new skyscrapers going up in our ever changing city. Sadly that was the end of the day, and for the time being, my stay with the building exploratory. I must say it has been a fantastic experience and I am very grateful to Lizzie, Amiee and Nicole for putting up with me! I also hope I have managed to contribute some work towards some of the great projects going on at the Building Exploratory, it's probably the first time i've found 'work' so fun!

Bye for now!
Tom

 Chris and his challenging congregation (with me looking a bIt out of place in the background!)

            

My Haggerston, your Haggerston

Yesterday was another eventful day, so eventful in fact that I didn't have time to write anything about it! So now I'm going to do a brief recap of what I got up to in my penultimate final day at the building exploratory. Firstly we had a meeting to discuss some ideas for the exciting new sustainability workshop focusing on 'the green olympics'. Our idea was to make a table comparing the 'greenest', most eco-friendly nations to their performance in the actual games. Needless to say, I got a bit distracted looking at some amazing websites which had data ranging from countries' CO2 output per capita, to the percentage of reptile species living there! (seriously, i never knew that: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_kno_rep_spe-environment-known-reptile-species). We also looked at doing some cool demonstrations of wind and water power as forms of renewable energy with making turbines and water mills. It might even be possible to light up the lights of the model Olympic stadium that will be used, with our own generator. Other tasks were to finish recording the places in the 'my haggerston' project (the water trough is still missing...), the photos of which are below, and to write up research into local people's favorite buildings. So far the east london mosque is looking like a winner. However, one interviewee described the high street rather eloquently as, 'hectic, crowded, and busy'... Its not that bad! It needs more water troughs though.

How not to raise environmental awareness ...

   The K2 and K3 version telephone boxes, spot the difference!

The Disappearing Water Trough...

So this is my second day at the Building Exploratory and so far it has been an absolute joy! Its great to finally do some research into things that really interest me. Yesterday I began looking into designing a workshop to help raise awareness about environment, legacy and sustainability issues surrounding the Olympic park after the games. The workshop will be aimed at children in key stage 3, so hopefully I can remember what interested me at that age! I find this issue particularly relevant, not just because we have the actual games in 9 days (beware going on public transport!) but because my footy team is west ham and they want to take over and re design the stadium after the games. Today though, i was looking at something a bit more local and looking more at the past of london, than the future. As part of the 'My Haggerston' project which involves the recording and research of significant buildings in Haggerston for the benefit of an online source, my task was to find um... a postbox and a water trough?           Although I had doubts as to whether these were significant or even buildings, my research revealed an interesting insight into the history of our iconic Red boxes and the importance of the water troughs to the growth of London's industry. On my exploration the telephone box on the end of Queensbridge road was easy to find although I did feel like a bit of a tourist in taking a picture of it! The water trough on the other hand, would prove more challenging. This particular trough should not have been that hard to find; a large granite structure inscribed with 'thou should be kind to thine animals' would normally stand out on a London street. However after a long search down Yorkton street I concluded that it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps I did miss it but at the moment the mystery of the disappearing trough is one that is yet to be solved...

More next time!
Tom

(If seen please return to Yorkton road E2...)

 

Well This is Good Bye

Today we have looked through books about Hackney during the Second World War, and finding pictures of the consequences of war on Hackney's buildings.

We were meant to go on a tour of Haggerston's listed buildings, but sadly it was rainy and horrible and just not very nice weather. But we didn't mind too much, because in all fairness we have been out quite a lot this week :)

It was still rainy at lunch, but we kept to our strict tradition of eating at the Canal (or Canarrrl as Ella accidently called it, or so she says...) But Tesco's had the BEST SANDWICH FLAVOUR (it does) so we were happy (even though Ella copied all of my lunch :)

We don't want to go back to school, partly because of the English and French Exams that we have on Monday! But also because working life is not that fun, but everyone is really lovely :) and we have done some good things.

So thank you, to all the people here at The Building Exploratory for having us, and giving us a a good opportunity to see what work is all about.

So toodle-pip guys, hope people have fun reading our blog.

Over and out.

P.S: Special thanks to Janet and Lizzie :D xx

Ella's Star

Today we finished off all our tasks, including writing up the details of the listed buildings... It took a while but we managed it :) As always we went to Tesco's for lunch, but Tesco's has a limited range of sandwiches... Which is rather upsetting :(

Charlotte looking happy :)

The Meeting in progress

In the afternoon we went to a meeting it was joyful. We were in charge of taking photos, and indeed took a lot, 99 in fact! The artists in the meeting did loads of cools things, they were set a project by The Building Exploratory, to get older people involved in stuff, but creatively! Some of the elder people the artists worked with had mental health issues, or low mobility, but the artists managed to work round that.

The project Ella and I enjoyed the most, was one involving light boxes, as you can see from the middle photo, Ella had fun projecting the light on the ceiling! The artist involved in the project got the elder people to project light on the walls of a church, and used coloured cellophane to make it all pretty and colourful :)

We were in charge of getting people tea, coffee and passing round brownies! I never knew people needed so many spoons...



After the meeting had finished, we had to have our pictures taken, these are mine and Ella's:

And tomorrow is our last day! :'(

Whitechapel Hospital Museum

Yesterday we visited a museum, which showcased all of the tools doctors used to use, back in the 'old days'. We were disgusted to find out that doctors/nurses used to ring a bell, which called all people near by to help hold the 'patient' down before they cut them open. WITHOUT ANAESTHETIC!

Charlotte's talking stomach.

27.06.12

Today we visited the archives in Whitechapel, to find out the various uses of buildings over a period of time. We chose three different years and got to work! Of course my stomach decided to try and communicate with people but, hey! (Not literally, but I was really hungry..) It was weird seeing how the uses of a certain property had changed, it may have once been a family's pride and joy, their little linen shop, but now is a rarely thought about "Morley's Fried Chicken".

We have spent the afternoon (trying to) research the buildings, but google is being incompetent today. :(

Our First Day

25.06.12:

Today we had an induction of what The Building Exploratory does, and got to view photos of some of their previous and current projects. We researched 103 listed buildings that are involved in a new project that The Building Exploratory is starting.  We found it tricky at first, partly because the website was so complicated and the map didn’t have road names…

However we over came this problem! YAY! and are looking forward to coming back tomorrow, as we are going on a tour of listed buildings in Haggerston.

Days 18 and 19 (9-10/6/2011)

Thursday was spent writing up final suggestions for our volunteer-research project ion buildings in the East End and also how we might carry out this research and final ideas for ‘Digging Hackney’.

Used under Attribution-No-commercial (CC) license - Flickr user delete08

Friday morning I finished this off and then did a bit more research into Hackney Wick for future projects. I discovered some more of its fascinating history not least of all the strange tale of the first railway murder in Britain in 1864. Apparently the victim, Thomas Briggs met his fate on a train between Bow and Hackney Wick following dinner in Peckham. His assailant Franz Muller left him by the side of the tracks and later escaped on a boat to New York but only after selling the unfortunate Briggs’ pocket watch- the jeweller from Cheapside (in the City) whom he sold it to came forward and identified Muller after hearing the story. The police took a faster boat and were waiting in the Big Apple to apprehend the murderer who was later hanged at the infamous Newgate prison- now the site of the Old Bailey. As for the victim himself, on the evening of his attack he was brought to the Milford Castle pub (which is still there, although now called the Top o’ the Morning) on Cadogan Terrace next to Victoria Park but sadly died later, back home in Clapton.

This afternoon we had a staff meeting all about future projects and it was great to hear all the plans the organisation has and also to look at some of its recent successes. It has been a real privilege to work here- 4 weeks has absolutely flown by as I have been given such a variety of interesting things to do and been entrusted with quite a lot of responsibility to get projects like ‘Digging Hackney’ moving forward. I really appreciate that the team here have allowed me to do this and it has been really rewarding. Hopefully I have been a helpful presence too! – I’m really going to miss it. This is my last blog and I hope you have enjoyed hearing about what a unique organisation I have had the chance to work for. I urge everyone to follow the other blogs and our ongoing projects via the TBE website or to come along to one of our events in the summer.

Days 15 and 16 (6-7/6/11)

Monday brought an early start - I was going back to school…

We went to Culloden Primary School in Poplar to give an all school series of workshop on the changing built environment of the area around the school, the Olympic park and London in general. I had to help organise the volunteers handing out information sheets etc. and setting up for activities. Each session was only about half an hour long but us volunteers had to move between different classrooms with all the materials quickly so as not to keep the children and their teachers waiting. First off I helped the teacher in a year 5 class talk about the changing nature of the Olympic park, particularly how the map has changed over the years and even how whole streets have disappeared. We emphasised this point by talking about Temple Mills Lane, which was rediscovered in 2008 in excavations for the Velodrome in the north of the site. This road had been buried under around 10 metres of Victorian landfill and we showed the children a Quicktime VR (click and hold then drag cursor to move around 360 degrees) of the archaeologists digging there - I’m the one behind the tripod thing (dumpy-level)! As soon as the kids found out I was an archaeologist they seemed a lot more interested in what they were doing! In other sessions classes compared historic and contemporary maps and thought about the infrastructure needed to host the Olympics.

The early 19th century riverboat I helped excavate in
December 2007. Pretty cold and that isn't exactly clean water
-more like old diesel and who knows
what else... Lucky we were wearing protective suits.

All the volunteers and Janet, Lizzie and Rosie, who prepared for and ran the day, worked incredibly hard to make this all work smoothly and I really think the school children enjoyed it. That said, running a workshop all day for over three hundred children is very tiring so was glad to get home and rest afterwards although it took two hours due to a dodgy DLR train being stuck in the tunnel at Bank. Funnily enough I went home via Stratford as a result and saw the Olympic venues from the Overground that I had been getting the kids to look at that morning and where I had worked three years ago. Back then it was a completely different landscape and not always a pleasant one as you can see from the picture to the right.

On Tuesday I helped with lunch some secondary school pupils who came to TBE for a workshop on the Olympic legacy who then got to go on a tour of the athletes village, which I was quite jealous of! Along with this I continued to work on ‘Digging Hackney’.

Days 13+14 (2-3/6/2011)

Another busy week and another lack of blogging on my part...

Last week on Thursday I spent time investigating Hackney Wick’s heritage as part of our ongoing investigation into the area- this was all the more enjoyable as the weekend before I had wandered up the Lea Navigation Canal from here and spotted some of the buildings I was then reading about. This area is very bounded: To the West and North the A12, to the East, the river Lea and the Olympic Park and running through the centre is Lea Navigation and Hackney Cut where it links with the Hertford Union Canal running in from the west. More on this soon. Despite its proximity to the Olympics it has a very distinctive feel and is still very industrial- the smell of the Bagel factory is particularly enticing!

I also spent time investigating English Heritage’s listed buildings databases and attempting to create maps through an experimental database tool that can output entries directly as map pins on a Google map called Google fusion- (sorry for tall the Googles).

Friday brought a visit to the Woodberry Down estate in the North of Hackney where the Senior Bees building explorers learnt about the history of the estate and its massive 15+ year transformation and commensurate doubling of its density to over 4000 homes. The tour of the first phase of development we had was all the more impressive to me given that I had worked on one of the sites as an archaeologist in 2008- where once stood a bombed out 1920’s house there is now a 27 storey tower block.

Friday afternoon brought massive amounts of photocopying, laminating and preparation for our visit to Culloden school on Monday 6^th which I will talk about tomorrow!

Days 11 and 12 (31/5- 1/6/11)

Since Monday was a holiday, I came back to work on Tuesday. In the morning I helped Lizzie out planning for a schools mapping workshop next Monday with 300 children that I am meant to be helping to run! Slightly daunting but sure it will go great. In the afternoon I went to Hackney Museum and catalogued all the finds used in the ‘Digging Hackney’ Workshop where children learn about archaeology. As part of our plans to change this workshop we thought it would be a good idea to know what artefacts we actually have at the moment and whether we need any different types. To do this I gave each bone, tile or piece of pottery a number and a description, attempted to date them (not the bones…) and photographed and labelled them.  The dating was tricky to say the least, despite having been an archaeologist for 3 years in London and with the help of two books I still struggled to sort some Medieval and Roman pottery from one another!

Today I inputted all this information into a spreadsheet and linked this to the photos. Whilst somewhat monotonous, this will really help us change the workshop into a more Hackney focussed activity hopefully that might look at several different aspects of past lives and local places.

Also today I have been trying to wrack my brains what might be good as a key introductory object for when we take the workshop out to schools rather than in the museum. At the moment the workshop focuses around the idea of age and how archaeologists can tell things about the past as fantastically evidenced by the Springfield Park log boat in a glass case in the museum which is great because people can stand and look down on it or sit on the glass above it to see how many people it could hold etc. Obviously to go out to schools we need something equally as impressive and evocative but somewhat smaller and less fragile! Ideas are welcome! The search continues…

Week 2 Round Up (24-27/5/2011)

              

Been a busy week so haven’t had much time for blogging. Here’s what I’ve been upto.

On Tuesday I visited the Tower Hamlets Local History centre and Archive to learn how to carry out research into some of the buildings we are interested in in the East End. This was harder than it seemed at first as many of the street names and numbers have changed over the decades often I had to orientate myself by the name of a pub or a church nearby. In the afternoon I again helped Lizzie with ‘digging hackney’ at the museum.

Wednesday brought a new challenge: Fifteen Year olds…I helped Lizzie out with her Shelter workshop at City University where a group of Year 10 students learnt about architecture and the various forms of buildings needed to survive in different environments. I really enjoyed this and got to help them build architectural models of designs that could cope with deserts or underwater etc. The young people were really enthusiastic and I found it easy to talk to them and help out.

On Thursday I continued to research some sporting hackney heritage and also did research for updating the digging Hackney workshop. Finally, on Friday I ran a stall for the Building Exploratory at an event called ‘A Big Day Out’ aimed at older/retired men in Hackney up at the West Reservoir near Manor House where a variety of activities and different organisations encouraged people to try something new. I was slightly nervous about the responsibility of representing an organisation I had only worked for for two weeks! However it went really well: I talked to people about the upcoming taster event we have planned for our older peoples program, the organisation in general and encouraged folks to build London in plasticine as you can see above right. A busy week but a fun one!

Blog Days 5 and 6 (20 + 23/5/2011)

After a staff meeting on Friday I helped Karen out with the Senior Bees and Building Explorers. This is a group of older people who meet every Friday for tours, lectures and discussions about London’s built environment and heritage. This Friday they had a lecture about social housing from David Gregory of the Metropolitan Housing Partnership. He described how his organisation carried out developments to provide affordable hosing in conjunction with government subsides and increasingly cross-subsides from mixed developments of market-price homes and affordable units. It was really interesting although it stretched my maths to the limit! I think the people who came got a really good overview of how it all worked and for my part I have a better idea of why it costs so much to provide social housing etc.

On Monday I continued to research some of Hackneys sporting heritage creating a simple spreadsheet of both demolished and existing buildings such as Haggerston Baths, the demolished Millfields/Clapton Stadium (home to Clapton (Leyton) Orient from 1900-1930) and those venues demolished as part of the Olympic park such as the Hackney Wick Stadium or Eastway Cycle Track. I then put all these locations onto a Google Earth Map that I will continue to update and add to through the coming weeks.

On my lunch breaks I have been getting lost in Haggerston but on our street I discovered this piece of modern heritage…

Days 3 and 4 (18-19/5/2011)

I spent Wednesday and Thursday formulating some ideas on a way to collect information on buildings in Bow Road as part of the Transformers project TBE has running. At the moment we have been working on how volunteers will collect information about specific buildings from archives etc. and I’m going to go to the archives next week to test out how easy this is to implement.

I also have started working on gathering a bit of information about Hackneys sporting heritage along with archaeology and long term change in the Olympic park for a school workshop and at the same time, continuing to think about changing the ‘Digging Hackney’ workshop. As you can see things get messy very quickly on my desk whenever I do research…

On Thursday I attended a staff meeting where the team discussed upcoming projects: this made me realise how much the Building Exploratory does and how many different groups they work with.

I’ve got lots to do but nice to have a wide variety of interesting projects to work on. Also it’s great to have responsibility for doing research and having some creative input too! 

Day Two (17/5/2011)

After a great first day I cycled into work, which let me get there much faster, despite the crazy traffic near Highbury... I started the day discussing the archaeology program TBE has in place and learning about KS2 history, science and art to get a better idea of how their workshop, 'Digging Hackney', fits in with the curriculum. Since I went to school in Scotland it was very different in some ways from what I learned at the age, but after an hour or so felt I had a good idea of what was required.

At lunchtime I cycled over to Hackney Museum with Lizzie, the projects coordinator at TBE, to help out with the workshop itself.

I haven't worked much with young kids before and was slightly nervous but over a cup of tea and while we setup the workshop, Lizzie explained to me what I had to do. When they all arrived I helped get them all to sit down quietly, look around the museum and excavate some modern rubbish (all thoroughly clean and dry I hasten to add) to work out what we could tell about people from what they leave behind. My group had a commuter's rubbish; the remains of two coffee cups, a Metro and a travel-card.

Lizzie explained to the class that I used to work as an archaeologist, a job that the kids were going to get a chance to become in the next activity.

Funnily enough on one of the museums newer exhibits, there was a picture of me at the Olympic Park doing some surveying at an excavation at Temple Mills under the Velopark! If you are interested here is a link to a different Quicktime VR photo of the site from 2008.

After a hectic couple of hours excavating sand-filled boxes of with real Roman and Medieval artifacts buried in them and the class completing their own recording sheets (just like real archaeologists) the kids left and we tidied up and head back to the office. It was a really fun experience and I dealt with it better than I thought I would - was nice to be digging again even if it wasn't for real!

  

Day One on my Work Placement at the Building Exploratory (16/5/2011)

Hi I'm Jonny Gardner and will be blogging here over the next few weeks about my work placement at the Building Exploratory.

I’m a Masters student from University College London, studying Cultural heritage Studies and will be here for 4 weeks gaining experience in a heritage and outreach organisation as part of my course. I’m really excited about seeing all the different tings the Building Exploratory does and getting a chance to take part and contribute.

I have lived in London for 6 years, both studying and working here; before starting this masters degree I worked as an archaeologist for the Museum of London. In this job I worked at the Olympics, in the City and elsewhere, digging up ancient artefacts the Bronze Age, Roman, Medieval and more recent periods. While I’m here at TBE, I hope to bring some of this archaeological experience and knowledge into the work the TBE does and write about this here too.

On the first day I started in the afternoon and over a cup of tea was introduced to the work the Building Exploratory does, its different outreach programs and some of its past projects. I then began to work on some ideas for the new archaeology primary schools workshops that are being developed – I hope to be able to speak to some of my former colleagues for advice on this to enable people to learn about their local pasts, as well as consider how London as changed over the centuries.

An excellent first day overall, and nice to have a change from writing essays!

Doug, Thursday, Week 2.

Today was the penultimate day of our work experience, we met Lizzie at Holy Trinity Primary School at 9:30 (although I got lost I got there in the end) where she was doing a workshop about maps. We had to take photos of the class being involved in the workshop and when she gave them and activity to do we went around the room helping out each group. 

After lunch we came back to the office were we sorted through all the photos we took that day.

Alfie Thursday Week 2

Today was the second last day of Mine and Doug's work experience. I hoped for these last two days to be as interesting and fulfilling as they possibly could be. This day was definitely one of the best, starting it of was another workshop but in a completely new school. We helped Lizzie carry out an all new workshop showing young children how Hackney has changed over the years, this was an interesting morning and I even learned a few things myself.

The second part of the day consisted of me and Doug sorting out and retouching the photos we took during
the workshop. This was a nice easy task and a nice finish to the day.

Doug, Wednesday, Week Two.

Today we were assigned the task of putting leaflets in envelopes, then stamping them with the TBE information and sticking on an address. We made about 150 envelopes, we then took them down to The Learning Trust branch under the Hackney library where they would be posted off to all the different schools.

After lunch we came back to the office and were told we needed to find a certain map amongst the hundreds of maps that were there. Alfie and I found it after a lot of searching and also found the certain street they were looking for (although it was called something different because the map was so old).

Not the most exiting of days but I enjoyed because we got McDonalds for lunch :)