Southampton City Walls sit grudgingly alongside modern architecture and street furniture. On a quiet winter's day you can imagine arrowheads emerging ominously through the tall slits and helmeted faces peering down from the battlements. Then an incongruous crisp packet blows across the scene shattering the illusion.
There are windows sitting curiously at pavement level in places, illustrating that the ground has been built up significantly over the centuries. The waters of The Test lapped the base of these walls over 1000 years ago, yet a 2oth century town planner had the temerity to agree to a telephone booth.
I know some of you guys like to see these pictures so I hope you don't mind me putting up a few. There are more to come, particularly of the Bargate but I need to get over to town early on a Sunday to get pictures without people!
(I have been hacked off with Hello lately and you probably noticed I started using Flickr. However despite no help from Hello I think I have solved why pictures weren't displaying. I have renamed them without spaces between the words and these worked today. Fingers crossed.)
21 March 2005
City Walls
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7 comments:
I love the sense of place you convey with these posts.
Great pictures.
Knowing just about every stone in these walls from boyhood, they capture the essence of a City struggling to preserve its past and proud heritage, and a City struggling to find its place in the 21st century.
Good work, fella.
Those are incredible. It's amazing to me to see the contrast between the old and the new, side by side.
Tell us something that happened there.
Jen - the stone seems so permanent you can imagine it still standing in another thousand years. I have pictures of Tudor buildings too. I'll put those up for you in due course.
Roots - you must know these views well I guess. The modern City is a tough salty seaport but then I'm a softie originally from Bournemouth. I'm used to yellow sand, sparkling blue water and green parks!
CC - I took these shots with your request in mind. You will see I have added another at the top of the strip just for you. Here's the story: The Pilgrim Fathers set sail from that spot on 5th August 1620 in The Mayflower. They pulled into Plymouth about 100 miles to the west before sailing for America.
Kenny said it...a city struggling to perservere its past and proud heritage, yet struggling to find its place in the 21st century..
Ahh the walls I have built in 20 yrs of the drink trying also to perservere my past and struggling to fit in my new life...
If the walls could only tell the tales they know, I bet we all would listen to hear as only they could tell :)
Doughgirl - interesting that you should think of these stone walls as a metaphor. Very nicely put.
Wow! How relevent to us Americans. Fascinating. Now I know something I didn't know yesterday.
History comes alive on the internet :)
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