Useful Notes for Broken Homes III

The Island of Silence

Aldernay is a small island off the coast of France which became attached to the British crown at the same time William of Normandy did. In the 13th century it remained attached, along with the other channel islands, when Normandy was Incorporated into the Kingdom of France.

From that point on the island's economy was principally driven by the building of fortifications, by the English and later the British against the French, then by the Germans against the British and, since 1945, the rich against the tax man.

With the rest of the Channel Islands Aldernay was occupied by the Germans after the fall of France in 1940. The Germans set up four concentration camps on the Island housing Russian and Polish POWs, Jewish slaves and forced labourers from occupied Europe. It was while working their prisoners to death that the Organisation Todt and the SS pioneered the brutalist(1) style of modern architecture. A style that became much admired by post war modernist architects who went onto inflict it upon the people of Europe in the 1950s and 60s.

(1) The beauty of brutalism is that the building bears no external relationship with its function so whether it is a theatre, a housing estate or a gun emplacement is almost impossible to determine frrom the outside.

Useful Notes For Broken Homes II

COIN STREET COMMUNITY BUILDERS

In 1977, faced with the prospect of having their area ‘developed’ in the style that has made the 1970s a byword for architectural brilliance, the good people of Coin Street formed an action committee and dug their heels in. By 1984, with the aid of the GLC who owned some of the land, they’d seen off the developers and formed Coin Street Community Builders. 

In the years that followed they redeveloped the 5 hectare site with an emphasis on making it a good place to live for locals. A pair of world famous restaurants being an optional, but very tasty, extra.

The lesson of the Coin Street Action Committee is that when they arrive in your neighbourhood and try and push you around – resist. No matter what they tell you it’s possible to win. 

The Coin Street Community Builders website is here.

Useful Notes For Broken Homes I

St. Savoir's Docks 1795

St Saviour's Dock

You leave monks alone for five minutes if they’re not developing the foundations of the modern scientific method(1) or throwing peasants off their land they’re developing the mouths of innocuous tributaries of the Thames into major dockyards.

In the 17th Century it became a favoured place to execute pirates. The poor blameless river who’s misfortune it was to have a gibbet hung at its mouth became known as the Neckinger after the slang term for the noose – The Devils Neckcloth.

By the 19th Century it was a horrific rookery where thousands of the London poor were forced to live in horrifically overcrowded and dirty accommodation. It was here that Charles Dicken’s played out the drama of Bill Sykes death and in honour of that great work of literature Doctor Who threw a Dalek out the window in 1984.

More information on the dock can be found here and a description of the course of the Neckinger is here.

(1) Friar Bacon – I mean Fry-er Bacon, did he not want to be taken seriously?

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Арка́дий Струга́цкий & Бори́с Струга́цкий

Never in a million years would you guess they were SF writers would you?

Famous Russian SF writers who wrote, amongst many other things, Roadside Picnic (Пикник на обочине) and Monday Begins on Saturday (Понедельник начинается в субботу). The first was turned into Stalker by that cheerful bugger Andrei Tarkovsky and the latter is important to Broken Homes because of SPOILER not to mention SPOILER and SPOILER.

Actually I don’t know why I brought them up. Look into my eyes this blog never happened, you were never here… buy more than one copy of Broken Homes.