Richard Jones

Detail from Ordnance Survey map showing Carlisle’s Manure Works and Varnish Works.

#Victorian innovation never ceases to amaze me. If there was a process needing industrialising, scaling, and making more efficient, they found the solution. Exhibit #1: how Carlisle solved the tricky problem of polishing its turds. #OrdnanceSurvey #Map #Manure #EnvHist #NneteenthCentury #History

Hand-written label reading ‘Sewage Farm’, set diagonally and reading bottom left to top right. Overlaid with marbled paper, chocolate and coffee brown bubbles and blisters.

Am enjoying being creative with my historical
sources. Love the marbled #paper I am finding. Their naturally fluid forms and some of their colour palettes seem very apposite for the subject of #sewage. #History #DoubleExposure

Extract from a handwritten minute from 1872. What looks like ‘Messrs Stinks’ is actually ‘Hinks’. They were manufacturing chemists.

With reference to my previous toot relating to people with
surprisingly apposite involved somehow in #Victorian #sewage #farming I thought for the briefest moment today that I’d found another. Messrs Stinks of Small Heath. Then my palaeographical brain kicked in! #disappointment

Extract from a Victorian minute book, hand-written, mentioning ‘Bladder Hy’ or Henry Bladder

Extract from a Victorian minute book, hand-written, mentioning Mr Crapper.

The #joy of working in #archives. On Tuesday I found a reference to on Mr Crapper selling land to be used as part of Walsall’s sewage farm. Today I found a Henry Bladder providing horses, labour, and tools to the sewage farm at Malvern. Writing the #history of […]

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Sometimes life serves up a conundrum. This evening was one. What to watch on live #TV? (I don’t stream). So my choice was World Series #Darts or Dvorak’s New World Symphony at the Proms. Went for the darts (you could have finished earlier Luke the Nuke) but earlier enough to enjoy the last of […]

Opening paragraph of article provisionally entitled ‘As scarce as blackberries in February’: Nottingham and the beef crisis of December 1917-January 1918.

Writing at pace to fill time and space. An academic’s life. It’s a load of bullocks, obviously. #Cattle #History #WW1 #Nottingham #CowsOfMastodon

A bathing turtle, head and front legs bottom left, refracted through the opulent carved wood of a door next to the pond. Honey browns.

Been on my travels. A scene from Le Jardin Secret, hidden among the northern souks of #Marrakesh, #Morocco, #Turtle #Door #Wood

Shocks of red and pink flowers, the soft curve of a black and white painted bridge arcs from left to right over olive blue canal water. High-rise buildings in background. Distrusted by a canal bridge overlay to produce a more abstract effect.

#Birmingham challenged my predisposition to the #rural, and my dislike of the #urban, yesterday. I discovered a city and its people that I had not previously appreciated. Immense diversity, a warmth of reception, openness, curiosity, full of human authenticity […]

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Ghost letters on stone plinth. Verdigris from old copper lettering with iron studs. Reading CO-OPERATIVE PERMANENT

‘CO-OPERATIVE PERMANENT’. To paraphrase Heraclitus, permanence is an illusion; only change is real. Here’s some proof from #Birmingham today. #Philosophy

2024 royalties in for a #book I published in 2006. Grand total of 52p. Take that suckers! Eat my dust! #Billionaires #Club

Snatched view through trees down to a body of water. Rock outcrop in foreground and rock cliff face in background. Trees in early summer leaf. Photograph framed left and right by tree trunks.

In Leicestershire yesterday. Yes really. Soft, rolling, domesticated Leicestershire. But in hidden places the county shows off its much harder, jagged, wild character. A primordial scene created by stoneworkers’ chisels from a more recent past.

Website landing page. Suck Ces. Liquid Waste and Disposal and Drain unblocking. Specialists in the Midlands. Text placed over image of back of tanker with hose to right.

Suck Cess! Followed one of their lorries down the M69 today. What a company name! #Sewage

Reds and oranges and yellows, a kaleidoscope of russets, browns, ochre, and gold. Stained glass showing figures, one kneeling, above a bird, behind an orchard with trees laden with apples.

#FensterFreitag A detail of the remarkable work of contemporary stained#glass #artist, Thomas Denny https://www.thomasdenny.co.uk/ This to be found in Leigh #Church, Worcestershire.

Handwritten minute in spidery hand reading ‘A letter from Mr Dayman dated 5 Nov as to the smell from the Sewage Farm was read & referred to the Joint Committee.’

Might make a series. ‘Tales from the Sewage Farm’. How about this for starters? Mr Dayman’s complaints were regular and made over the course of 20 years! Unfortunately his house was opposite the sewage outfall. #Sewage #Smell #Farming (Transcription in image Alt-Text)

Black cloth book cover with cream label with fancy hand-written title ‘Sewage Farm’.

Sample of handwritten text. Reads ‘Broom asks for tool for drilling in with Mangold seed & the same was ordered.’

Joyously in the #Archives today. In #Devon Heritage Hub to explore the #NineteenthCentury records of Tiverton #Sewage #Farm. #EnvHist #History (transcriptions in image Alt-text)

Screen capture of the Wordle personal stats page, showing current streak at 365 days. Below the normal distribution of the number of rows used to find the word.

I normally keep quiet about this daily brain wake up exercise (aka time waster). But I haven’t achieved much in my life, so a whole year #Wordle streak is worth celebrating I think! 365 and counting.

@etp I use European-scale woodland cover maps C9-19 in my teaching (from memory taken from quite an old publication). Also European-scale maps of medieval and early modern open-field agriculture (much more recent publication). Lots of maps for Britain across the last millennium. Would need to […]

A photo story in nine panels featuring a slightly greying bespectacled man and black and white Holstein Friesian cows. Oh and an angry bull bottom left.

A colleague reminded me that it was five years ago to the day that I posted this pastiche teen magazine #photo #love story in another place. Lockdown Love. Enjoy! #Cows #CowsOfMastodon I still miss 706617. She was a beautiful, inquisitive, and charming little heifer.

@Meanwhile_on_earth_One Have you found younger me on Time Team yet? 😉

A stack of terracotta pots superimposed with an image of a border of Allium christophii (Star of Persia)

The walled #kitchen #garden at Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire was looking magnificent over the weekend. Especially the deep borders of Allium christophii (Star of Persia). My take. #DoubleExposure.

Amazon Music screen shot of Paul Simon ‘You can call me Al’ playing.

Did Paul Simon predict the #Future back in 1986? #Music #AI

Black and white sign saying OPEN STUDIO propped against a kitchen wall on green-tiled surface.

Photographs displayed on an oak table in black frames. Too distant to make out detail but provide a sense of their colour palette. In background others propped up on a book shelf!

As a #font fetishist I’m so disappointed with myself for buggering up the kerning on this new sign. Anyway (if you will forgive me for working at speed), everyone invited round my place this weekend if you find yourself in #Nottinghamshire and want to see my […]

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Ceramic basin with two brass taps, plug and over flow. Creamy white.

John Bolding & Sons Co. “ONDO”. #Edwardian #Sanitation Encountered today in ‘Snowzell’. If you know the #Gloucestershire accent you’ll know where to find it!

A small seedling, two small leaves. Red stem and red tint to underside of leaves. Soil background.

Behold! The first of my mighty mangel wurzels has germinated. Can’t express how excited I am to watch this monster grow over the next few months. #Heritage #Vegetables #Gardening #Crops #Sewage #Farming

A copy of Orchard, in autumnal livery, perched in the boughs of a lichen-covered apple tree.

In the magnificent ‘Orchard: a Year in England’s Eden’ Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates trace abundant life & occasional death through the seasons in one ancient #orchard in #Herefordshire. They are careful not to reveal its location. It’s too precious. But […]

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Overhead view of a seed tray with seed compost against a brick and weed background. Photo taken on the diagonal.

#May is the month to sow your Mangel Wurtzels. I just have. Have you? #Autumn monsters to come. This variety is the classic Long Red Mammoth beloved of #NineteenthCentury #Sewage farmers. #Gardening #Roots #Vegetables

A splay of five-petalled white flowers with yellow stamens. Dark green leafy background.

I love a good wyrt. And they don’t come much better than the Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea). Looking glorious round these parts right now. #WildFlowers #Herbs #Flowers