Tower Poppies

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

On the first of November we went to the Tower of London to see the Tower Poppies.

I had been by myself a couple of months before, in early September, one month after they had begun installing 888,246 poppies in the moat of the Tower of London, to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Our journey walking from London Bridge station, took us past HMS Belfast with its remembrance poppy.

'HMS Belfast wasn't in the First World War, it was launched in 1939

at the beginning of the Second World War.'

Stepping off Tower Bridge these were the first Tower Poppies we saw.

Then walking up the West side, I saw how the field of poppies had grown in the last two months,

from this,

to this.

Each poppy represents a life,  a British military fatality in the First World War.

Volunteers will have planted all the poppies, in just over three months.

I wondered what kind of people had volunteered and what their reasons may have been for doing so.

Whether volunteers were perhaps planting poppies in remembrance of relatives who served and died in the First World War.

I have no family history to tell my children of lives lost in the First World War.

But I tell them about my granny, who in her seventies, once showed me a letter that her father had sent her from the trenches, with a drawing of a flower and mud on it. When she died, my mum hunted high and low, and much to all our disappointment the letter was never found.

We have spent the last few weeks building up a picture of the First World War, listening to 'Horrible Histories' in the car and during the half-term break last week we went to Vimy Ridge, a First World War battlefield in Northern France, with cousins. (I'll post about that trip soon) We were all captivated by the tunnels, trenches, bomb craters and stories of fighting, communications, living conditions and truces.

So when we met back up with the same cousins, just a week later, to see the Tower Poppies, I felt that our kids had in their minds, a little of the 'bloody' context for these flowers.

And it was difficult not to be overwhelmed at their number.

A sea of red below us!

The number of visitors coming to see Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red has made the news, with surrounding road and tube closures essential to manage the crowds, 

It was busy, very very busy.

But we all agreed, between aged ten to seventy-three, that it was worth it.

On the way home my youngest two asked whether they would do that again to mark the 200 year anniversary. "You would have to live to 111 years old to be around for the 200 year anniversary".

 We talked about how things can get forgotten and whether there would maybe be other wars in the next 100 years that we would need to remember.

This installation was designed by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, in the words of the Tower website, 'creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower

but also a location for personal reflection'.

I think they achieved that.

The last poppy will be planted on the 11th November 2014.

Details on the website here.

De La Warr Pavilion

A family day at the seaside in October in glorious weather,

saw us heading to Bexhill on Sea.

 With a promise of visiting the

De La Warr Pavilion.

We could not have wished for bluer skies,

an amazing backdrop to this beautiful white building.

Ever since I heard about its re-opening in 2008,

having been shut for five years for renovations,

and Grayson Perry curating the opening exhibition 'Unpopular Culture',

I have wanted to visit.

Aesthetically it's a modernist building

built in 1935,

in the Art Deco style.

Researching about the De La Warr Pavilion on their website,

I read that'

"Modernism, which had started as an expression of national culture,

...adopted a politically informed position.

The Pavilion design is an expression of a specifically social and moral agenda,

...incorporated into an aesthetic philosophy".

In 1932, the mayor, the 9th Earl De La Warr, a junior minister in the National Labour Party,

 launched a "competition for the design of a seaside Pavilion which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a people‘s palace".

It worked, it still has a people's palace feel about it.

Where people can take time,

to meet up

see exhibitions,

gather for open-air performances

round this 2001 movable band-stand,

shop,

and admire the view.

Honestly there were loads of people milling about on this gorgeous sunny day,

I just picked my moments to take these photos.

Coming out of the lifts, we spotted this,

the Bexhill Mural.

We couldn't work out why it was tucked down a narrow corridor by the lifts.

But I've since found out why.

Not the original, this is a copy,

done by a "member of staff at the De La Warr Pavilion,

...who painstakingly copied the mural onto canvas".

Originally designed by Edward Wadsworth,

this one is done by a local (I presume), Michael Howard.

Well done Michael Howard!

Back to the corridor...

...well the original, in the restaurant, faded on account of all that glass,

big windows and high light levels.

It has been restored but we didn't see it, it is tucked away safely, away from glass and light.

It hasn't always been a people's palace,

when the Second World War began in 1939,

the De La Warr Pavilion was temporarily closed and forced into blackout.

The first floor was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence to house the Southern Command.

As an arts centre, the De La Warr Pavilion holds strong to its modernist roots

of improving people's lives through technology, architecture and the like.

Having looked at how they're doing, they say of themselves...

..."We are an integral part of people’s lives and stories

but not always in the ways we expected.

We discovered that we are valued not only because of what we do but how people use us

- as a place to meet friends and family, to enjoy the food, the weather and the view.

These are relationships that have been “under the radar” for us for many years

and we are excited that they have been uncovered as being at the heart of who we are."

Getting into the spirit of things,

 of self improvement and progress through architecture, exhibitions and coffee,

we went to the De La Warr Pavilion as a family, me, my mum and sisters in-law,

for a coffee on the first floor where we sat in the sun and enjoyed the view

making the most of the people's palace.

Details on the De La Warr Pavilion website here.

Roman Armour from Italy, mostly.

There are objects in museums you think you are familiar with,

armour being one of them.

I've got kids,

they had knights

in plastic, playmobil and lego.

Then last week with a friend, in the British Museum, we spotted these...

Bronze foot guards.

They weren't in our playmobil set

and playmobil make the smallest of accessories.

This was perhaps, along with the real reason foot guards may have become obsolete,

they were too cumbersome.

We loved the fact that the Romans who made these,

had tried to overcome the 'cumbersome-ness' of the foot-guards with practical hinges.

We genuinely did not know that hinges existed in 520BC.

But hang on, they had doors back then.

Much of the armour looked as if it had been moulded on real people,

with knobbly knees...

Bronze greaves (shin guards) 520-480BC

...and muscular chests.

Roman cuirass (breastplate) 4th century BC

Though not all,

this had an 'action-man-chest' look about it.

Then there are helmets,

with questionable practicality,

but with a 'don't-mess-with-me' look about them.

Eventually, sometime after 400BC,

"the eye-holes became so small and close as to be non-functional

and they finally disappeared from the design altogether".

 I think they made the right call there.

Having to be practical wasn't a consideration in the design and manufacture of this armour.

Breastplate and helmet made of crocodile skin.

Made for processional purposes,

for a Crocodile cult in Egypt, 

The most modern of the armour in this blog post,

it has been radio-carbon dated to the 3rd or 4th century AD.

For me, the most intriguing information about this crocodile armour

was how it came to the British Museum, from Egypt to Britain.

It was presented by Mrs Andrews in 1846.

Who was Mrs Andrews?

Why did she have this in her possession?

Had it been in her family for all/most of the fifteen-hundred years of its life?

Where did she keep it?

How often did she get it out and look at it?

Who did she show it to?

Did she ever wear it?

Did she belong to a Crocodile cult?

We can only guess at these answers.

However (though probably not a popular thought with the British Museum curators),

I would love to think that it has served as armour over the centuries,

for children to dress up in,

for all those games of soldiers and war,

long before the days of plastic. 

See armour for yourself at the British Museum.

Details on their website here.

More about Room 70 and the Roman Empire here.

UPDATE

@RockaroundCroc from the British Museum has been in touch

with an answer to my question;

Who was Mrs Andrews?

She was married to Edward James Andrews, a painter and draughtsman.

He produced drawings and plans of the pyramids for H. Vyse,

an anthropologist and Egyptologist in the 19th century.

He died aged 31, and five years after his death

Mrs Andrews donated this crocodile skin to the British Museum.

Two years after this the Andrews' Egyptian collection was sold off at auction.

More on Edward Andrews here.

And @RockaroundCroc, 

well he/she's a Nile Crocodile god, an Egyptian mummy at the British Museum.

Who better to answer my question!