The concept of History Pin from We Are What We Do and Google is beautifully simple. Young people spend time talking with people of an older generation about their old photographs and associated memories. The photos and stories are uploaded to the History Pin website, where they can be viewed through Google Maps and Street View. A little piece of history is created.
Here’s a short video explaining more:
It took a little while, but we finally persuaded some wonderful older people to visit a small group of Year 8 & 9 in our Student Support Centre. Over the course of two sessions, the students found themselves asking dozens of questions; in fact the original purpose of discussing photographs was quite subverted by the quality of the dialogue itself. In the end we only got to add one photo to the History Pin data base, but we’ll certainly run future sessions and try and expand the project further. History Pin is my discovery of the year!
Probably the worst 360 I’ve made yet but there were considerable issues involving an incident with a wave, high tide and a “courting” couple. Also my camera settings were out of whack since it was the first time in a long while that it has  been used in daylight. It’s an image of the arch at Langstone Rock Dawlish. I selected it because of the variety of structural and erosion features evident, and I’ll probably re-make it again next time I’m down that way. Click the image for full-screenness.
Developing brownfield sites is generally held to be a “good” thing (at least GCSE students are programmed to think so), however at times it’s worth considering that buildings such as power stations represent a substantial part of our industrial heritage. Hams Hall was a series of three coal-fired power stations at Lea Marston in Warwickshire, constructed between 1928 and 1968. Demolition of the last of the stations took place under cover of darkness in 1993
The only building that survives is the control room of Hams Hall substation. The exterior is vaguely reminiscent of a mosque, though guarded with razor wire and liberal coatings of anti-climb paint. Indeed on my first visit, late on a stormy November night, the place was less than welcoming, and I failed to get inside.
Thanks to information from some helpful locals, I was able to return for a closer look. I knew what to expect; a circular control room with an extraordinary glass “flower” roof.
I planned to make a 360 degree image to show the room properly. The floor is covered in glass and it’s extremely dark inside, meaning that the exposures had to be lit with a torch. Here’s the finished panorama on 360 Cities:
I’ve published the image as a full screen, high quality panorama on a personal page as well, since 360 Cities is getting a little cluttered . Click the image below:
Decrepit old buildings can hide all kinds of fascinating secrets. I don’t believe this building is protected in any way, although it is very well sealed up. Maybe it should be listed? Either way, it’s an important part of the local built environment, and a pretty special place. Perhaps we should get students to think more critically about the value of certain brownfield sites? The substation would make a really great local studies classroom, or some other kind of publicly-accessible building, where the unique roof and control panels could be protected from further damage.
Since August, I’ve pushed blogging and other forms of time-wasting activities firmly to one side and dedicated myself to a series of adventures in hidden places. Every weekend has been a new experience, learning new skills and going deeper and further into the hidden parts of the built environment that surrounds us. It’s a simple, yet hugely fulfilling activity, filled with remarkable characters and stories, risks and rewards. This Flickr River stream randomly serves up a taster of some of the places I’ve been:
The hobby has benefited both History and Geography lessons. This weekend we visited a hidden deep shelter, built to house 2,500 people during WW2. It was a surreal time walk:
I made this video for a local teacher (I had the song going around my head while exploring the shelter) Others might also find it useful:
This is a huge brownfield site near Fleet in Hampshire. Owned by the government, the National Gas Turbine Establishment facility was used to test jet engines until decommissioning a few years ago. The machinery and buildings are unique, but following the inevitable planning arguments, Tesco’s will be converting this extraordinary example of our industrial heritage into a warehouse distribution centre.
I’m delivering some INSET courses coming up in the next few weeks, which is the reason why there haven’t been any posts here for a while. I’m hoping to manage a few surprises!
Today my dad and I went on adventure. We were historian explorers for a day and we visited a Royal Observer Corps post. ROC posts are bunkers underneath the ground used during the Cold War; they are just like bomb shelters in World War Two. Here is some more information. The ROC post’s usually occur in the middle of isolated fields, they have barbed wire fencing protecting them and they look like mini submarines. They are coated in green paint for disguise. It took us a while to find the post, but when we did it felt like Narnia. We climed down a long ladder, which took you about ten feet below the ground and there it was, a room with a bed, a sink, a fire blanket sign and what I think was an air raid siren. It was such a good feeling after going down there. I have to confess, I wasn’t too keen on going down after seeing all the big hairy spiders; well lets just say that I’m not exactly a big fan of them. And what a better way to end such an exciting day by having some cheese and toast at a local cafe. I would definitly recomend it to you (not the cheese and toast but going to see the ROC posts I mean). If you like to explore and you like your history, go and hunt for some ROC posts. Here are some photos to show you what it looked like.
Laura
The hatch
Thanks Laura for writing this guest post and for taking the great pictures. Are there any ROC posts near you? Download this Google Earth file (there will be
These images will be added to my geographical panoramas page at Juicy Geography. I’ve managed to wear out my trusty tripod and need to buy a new one – so the usual plea about not embedding etc, without a donation applies. I’m working on an alternative way of displaying these images with more features, and without the distracting thumbnails when viewing at full screen.
The concept of History Pin from We Are What We Do and Google is beautifully simple. Young people spend time talking with people of an older generation about their old photographs and associated memories. The photos and stories are uploaded to the History Pin website, where they can be viewed through Google Maps and Street View. A little piece of history is created.
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