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withastolenlantern · 5 years ago

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The sun set slowly over the western horizon towards the Mexican coast as the helicopter carried them across the swells, a bright orange glow in the distance that caused the waves to glisten and sparkle in a hypnotic rhythm in time with the whirring of the rotors above. Chatham sat dejected, her feet dangling out the side port where a machine-gun position had once existed. They’d chased the hovercraft as far as they could, but the copter had been built for transport, not speed, even when it was new, and they'd of course removed all the weaponry. The old bird kept them close for nearly forty kilometers, the autopilot bobbing and weaving around sporadic small-arms fire, but the large turbofans powering the hovercraft eventually outpaced them as the helicopter’s low fuel alarm had chimed.

Whoever they were, they disappeared into the Caribbean twilight like so many pirates before them. The sea that spanned before them had formed the early foundation of the old British Empire, its islands once abustle with privateers and naval frigates alike. Thousands of ships had sailed these waters trading in sugar and gold and slaves, bringing untold wealth to the nascent imperium; the sloops and galleons had long-ago been replaced by drone barges and the slaves with autofabs. Things had come full circle, now, and it seemed fitting that the reincarnated royal union might begin its decline here as well.

She instructed the autopilot to turn and head for the Jamaican coast, where they landed at a joint Union and US naval air station. The obsolete helo purred like an enormous kitten as the rotors spun down and she dismounted the deck of the aircraft onto still-hot tarmac in the fading light of the equatorial sun. Santomas followed, his head ducked low under the slowing whine of the helicopter, as if unsure of a safe distance from the blades. Davis’s mobile rang as they crossed the air field, and he walked a distance to take the call outside the din of the aircraft.

Across the landing pad she watched what appeared to be American Marines in exosuits running in PT formation; the base supported both Commonwealth and US operations in the Caribbean, but since the formation of the Union, the "Special Relationship" had become strained, especially since the Canadians had rejected a US-led proposal for a greater North American Congress of Nations. The Canadian parliament cited their status as a former Crown Dominion as a major factor in rejecting the invitation, but the influence of the US and it's defacto Mexican puppet-state's continued adherence to a "might makes right" socio-economic policy was evident. She passed several of the Union infantry garrison standing to the west end of the airfield, stoically but obviously observing their American counterparts' exercises with derision.

Among the gawkers was the young flight leader who’d lent Chatham the Merlin. She stopped beside him and handed over the authenticator fob.

“Yanks are up to something again,” he remarked. “They’ve been drilling like this for days, full recon gear.”

“Drugs, you think?” she responded idly. With the Americans and Mexicans it was always either drugs or immigrants. It wasn’t entirely surprising, she’d always thought. Central and South America had always been somewhat under-developed, and the shifting climate and rising seas had only exacerbated the situation. The US land border with its southern neighbor was enormous, and largely desert, which made securing it incredibly difficult. Her native South Africa had a similar geographic disadvantage, but while they still embraced the Rainbow Nation ethos, the Americans had responded to their modern economic challenges by ignoring their largely immigrant history and doubling-down on nationalist sentiments and geographic isolationism.

“Most likely,” the young man said with a shrug. “What’s your deal, then? Command just said to expect some civvies and to have the helo fueled when you arrived. Never got to ask.”

“HeRMES,” the detective said, flashing her credentials from her mobile.

“Didn’t think they gave coppers flying lessons.”

“No, but the SBS does,” she replied with a wry smile.

“Curiouser and curiouser. And what’s with the nerd?” he asked, pointing toward Santomas who she now saw was now sprinting toward them across the tarmac.

“Technical consultant,” Chatham said, doing a poor job of hiding a smirk. She could only imagine her own reaction, back then, to such a scene: an obvious civilian running across the airbase, caked in sweat, with such reckless abandon.

Santomas skidded to a halt next to her, his face red and drenched in perspiration from the heat and his recent exertion. He tried to speak, then thought better of it and swallowed several heavy gulps of air. “That was the boss,” he panted. “He was pissed.”

“I’d assume so,” she said with a snort.

“He’s in Singapore until next week but he wants a full report when he gets back. Wants me back in the lab figuring out how the hell somebody’s getting execution access to the fabs. ‘Right bloody now’ I believe were the exact words,” Davis explained.

“Never a dull moment I suppose,” she said, turning to the officer. She offered a crisp salute in thanks. “Squadron Leader.”

“Don’t I know it, mum,” he said, returning the gesture.

They left the cadre of servicemen and walked across the airfield to one of the distant hangars. One of the Consortium’s commercial aircraft was parked under a rusting corrugated aluminum roof; it had ferried them down to the Caribbean and would carry them back up to Wales. How the Earl had gotten permission to park a private jet on an active Commonwealth military installation was beyond the detective, but she presumed that it had something to do with wealth and its privileges.

They boarded the jet without fanfare, and Davis keyed in his credentials and submitted the flight plan. Chatham settled into one of the plush chairs midway through the cabin and opened a terminal to begin her situation report. Before she knew it the autopilot had spooled up the turbines and they were aloft into the rapidly darkening sky, chasing the sunset as it crawled its way east. She looked out through one of the windows and saw Jamaica, still green and verdant even in the twilight, quickly disappear, just another speck amidst the breakers, swallowed by the massive sea.

They flew in silence most of the way, Chatham working on her report and Davis just sitting quietly across the cabin. He nursed a small glass of whiskey from the Earl’s bar in the rear, mainly swirling it against the sides of the frosted crystal, staring off into space.

“You’ve been atypically quiet, Mister Santomas,” she said looking up from the terminal.

“I’ve, uh… I’ve never been shot at before. Never killed anybody either. I think that’s catching up with me a little bit,” he said, continuing to stare at the floor.

“Best not to make a habit of either, I’ve found,” Chatham responded.

“Puts things in perspective a little,” the engineer confessed. “What if it had been me, falling lifeless through that hatch?”

The detective put down the terminal and leaned forward toward him. She’d been through this existential crisis before, many years ago in a bivouac in some coastal Indian city she couldn’t remember. Earlier that day she’d fired her weapon for the first time in anger, shooting a suicide bomber out of mid-air as he leaped over rubble and sprinted toward her squad. Afterward, she stood over the body, silent, staring at the hole in the insurgent’s chest. It was bigger than she had expected, somehow, and when she’d closed her eyes that night it was all she could see; a gaping, oozing portal where a person used to be, and it threatened to pull her in and consume her whole.

“But it wasn’t you,” she said.

“Tell me one thing I’ve done that matters,” he challenged.

“I mean, I’m...” she started to argue.

“Its fine,” he said, waving the detective off. “It’s not you. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve heard it all. I’m reliable. I get things done. I’m ‘good at my function’.” He made finger quotes as he listed off descriptors. “But those are the qualities you look for in a washing machine, not a person.”

Chatham tried to interrupt, but he continued. “When I’m gone, it won’t matter. In the course of human history, I don’t even rate a footnote. Fuck, the shareholders won’t even notice, and I’ve done nothing but make them money. No… no they’ll probably be happy because they can replace me with someone cheaper,” he scoffed, turning his eyes to the floor. “I haven’t accomplished anything with my miserable existence that’s worth a damn.”

The detective sat quietly, unsure of what to say. She knew from her own experience that whatever arguments she might present to the contrary would fall on deaf ears. When one fell in to these depths, no rhetorical ropes could pull you out until you’d resolved to make the climb. Her companion continued to fume, obviously if quietly. “You’re probably not… wrong,” she hazarded. “In the grand scheme of things, I don’t know that any of us really matter. Not as individuals, anyway. I mean, I have a Military Cross and I keep it in a fucking sock drawer. When I’m dead, they’ll etch a fancy symbol on my tombstone, and that’ll be the last anyone thinks of me.”

He looked up at her, his gaze deep and penitent. “This is all a fucking show, you know,” he said, gesturing around the laboratory. “It’s a sham, like me. HenRI is more than capable of running everything in here, at least to the Board’s liking. They put a body down here because it ‘humanizes’ the Consortium, makes the investors feel like they’re doing business with a human enterprise, and not just a machine. When Diaz passed away, they thought about letting HenRI run all of Operations. It’s not like we really do any meaningful R&D anymore; there’s no point when they’re shutting down most of the fabs. But the Earl knew better, and he was nervous about giving a virtual intelligence that much control. He wanted someone… pliable. Someone he could trot out to glad-hand and speak the customers’ language, but wouldn’t make waves. I’m no more than HenRI’s secretarial functions in flesh and bone.”

“I don’t believe that, even if you do,” she replied.

“Diaz killed himself, you know.”

“What?” Chatam said, taken aback.

Santomas shook his head in the affirmative, pantomiming a finger gun. “Forty-five to the temple, a no-doubter. Two floors up from here, in his office. He printed the gun himself, in one of the dev lab fabs that were off the network. I found the code on the server a couple days later.”

“Christ,” the detective swore.

“Janitorial drone found him one night, 3 AM, slumped over his desk. Only threw up the flag because of all the blood. HenRI notified me, and I had to break the news to Jaime, his partner. The Consortium bought his silence, of course; he took the payout and their kid and moved to some island in the Caribbean, or whatever’s left of it. Haven’t heard from him since,” he explained.

“Did he leave a note?” she asked.

“Not as such. It’s… it’s probably my fault, if anything,” Santomas said, starting to choke up. “I know Jaime hated it here in Wales and they were drifting apart at the end; looking back, I think I was the closest thing Yangervis had left resembling a friend. His parents fled cartel violence in Colombia when he was five, and they landed in Texas. They had trouble making ends meet in the US. His dad was killed robbing a convenience store; his mother sued the state and the settlement was how he was able to afford his initial studies at A&M. He started the autofabs, in my opinion anyway, as a way to relieve some of that economic anxiety for other families so they didn’t have go through what he did. We were so successful at first, but then Black Tuesday happened, and I think he blamed himself for all the layoffs that followed.

Looking back, I keep wondering if there weren’t signs I should have recognized. He used to gripe all the time about expanding capabilities and finding ways to streamline distributions to do more for the growing poor. I just… I never realized how far down that particular rabbit hole he’d gone. We had a memorial here, and then a week later the Earl offered me his job. I should’ve said no, but I’m too much of a coward.” The engineer wiped a single tear from his cheek with his shirt-sleeve.

Chatham leaned forward and patted his leg gently.“You saved my life today,” the detective replied. “That’s what you did that matters. There was no cowardice in that.”

#long post #these passages have probably been posted before #but at the time they were mostly just exercises and now i've found an organic fit for them #or whatever this whole thing is terrible #the world ocean

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deafeningbearcollective-blog · 6 years ago

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speedyanchorbouquet · 30 days ago

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Transport Consultants in Wrexham and North Wales

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architectnews · 3 years ago

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Maggie’s Cardiff Building, Dow Jones Architects

Maggie’s Cardiff Building Photos, Welsh Healthcare Architecture Project, Dow Jones Architects

Maggie’s Cardiff Building Award

14 Sep 2021

Maggie’s Cardiff

Design: Dow Jones Architects

photo © Anthony Coleman

Maggie’s Cardiff

Jury Report

Maggie’s Cardiff is the 19th completed Maggie’s Centre and adds to the pantheon of architects that have made these buildings a vital part of the contemporary British architectural scene.

The Velindre cancer care centre in the north-west suburb of Cardiff is the usual depressing hospital landscape, surrounded by a sea of parking. But of course, the inhospitable medical setting was the very reason that the late Maggie Keswick Jencks set out to counter in providing a place where those having to face the diagnosis of cancer can find an oasis of hope and support. ‘If you look after the carers, the carers can really look after the patients – you create a virtuous circle’, said Charles Jencks.

photo © Anthony Coleman

This building occupies an awkward triangular plot at the back of a car park. On first sight it is at once striking and surprisingly diminutive – but with its orange carapace formed of rusty corrugated sheeting, it stands out from the bleak surroundings. The architects talk about the form reflecting the silhouette of the Welsh hills and the repetitive gables of Valley towns, and the colour referencing the region’s red sandstone or the autumnal colour of bracken on the nearby hills, or the industrial buildings of the Valleys – the vibrant colour zings off the evergreen tree canopy that sits behind the building, offering a perfect backdrop in a sea of drabness.

The building adopts the roughly triangular site, leaving a strip of space to the rear and the trees so the resultant plan form is then given order by a serrated 45 degree pitched roofs that runs perpendicular to the rear wall. When the roof pitches meet the angled perimeter walls, the gable profile is formed by the meeting of the geometries to great effect.

The entrance sits on the southern corner of the plot and offers an open portal. Once within, a small courtyard embraces the visitor, and an immediate transition occurs from the institutional to the domestic – from the hostile to the familiar.

photo © Anthony Coleman

The mostly open plan is given order by three ‘freestanding’ timber elements; one containing toilets; another acting as a storage unit of the reception; and a third at the heart of the building is a ‘cwtch’ – a tall, intimate space lit from above inspired by the big chimneys of the Welsh vernacular. These elements sub-divide the space and takes you directly to the central kitchen and dining area common to all Maggie’s centres, offering a recognisable and safe place where we all know how to behave – making a cup of tea or perching on a chair for a chat.

Above the exposed raftered roofs play out their geometry and seem like waves washing over the plan. Apart from the three timber elements which are strictly orthogonal, no other space has square walls as the angular geometry of the plan prevail, so the sense of informality is further enhanced.

The back of the building opens up with two very wide glazed screens to the wall of trees and the polished concrete flooring slides out through glazed doors to provide seating space.

The architects also infuse the building with art – including bollards originally from a scheme in Peckham by Antony Gormley that were recast and stand as rusty sentinels, guarding the public sides of the building.

photo © Anthony Coleman

Hospital authority constraints did not allow PVs and a gas boiler was used for primary heating, but the building compensates by using a highly insulted pre-fabricated timber frame system that follows Passivhaus principles, minimising cold bridging, maximising air tightness and exceeding thermal Building Regulations standards.

The building is about 25% smaller than most Maggie’s and less than half of the average cost – it seems that due to complex NHS land deals, a new Maggie’s will be built on the adjoining hospital site in the 2030s, so this beautiful little building will have to be repurposed – it would be perfect as a kindergarten.

Infused with ideas of Welsh vernacular, art, and a deep concern for materiality, it creates truly restorative and poetic spaces as an antidote to the shadow of cancer.

This is a distinguished addition to the Maggie’s legacy. Through the architect’s skills, it benefits from the much-reduced budget and tight site.

photo © Anthony Coleman

Maggie’s Cardiff, Wales – Building Information

RIBA region: Wales Architect practice: Dow Jones Architects Date of completion: June 2019 Client company name: Maggie’s Cancer Care Project city/town: Cardiff Internal area: 240.00 m² Contractor company name: Knox and Wells

Consultants:

Structural Engineers: Momentum Environmental / M&E Engineers: Mott MacDonald Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant: RPA Cardiff Project Management: Maggie’s Landscape Design: Cleve West Art Curation: Mike Tooby

Awards:

• RIBA Regional Award • RIBA National Award • Stephen Lawrence Prize 2021 Shortlist

Stephen Lawrence Prize 2021 Shortlist

Maggie’s Cardiff Building, Wales, images / information received from RIBA 140921

Location: Cardiff, South Wales, UK

Welsh Architecture

Contemporary Architecture in South Wales – architectural selection below:

Welsh Architecture Designs – chronological list

Cardiff Architecture News – architectural selection below:

Cardiff Transport Interchange Architecture: Holder Mathias Architects image courtesy of architecture office Cardiff Transport Interchange Development

Cardiff University Innovation Campus Design: HawkinsBrown ; HOK ; BDP ; DPP image from architecture office Cardiff University Innovation Campus

Mixed-Use Development for Cardiff Bay image from architects Cardiff Waterside

Cardiff University Innovation Campus Design: HawkinsBrown ; HOK ; BDP ; DPP image from architecture office Cardiff University Innovation Campus

Welsh Architecture

National Assembly for Wales building design by architect Richard Rogers, London

Maggies Wales Building design by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa

Welsh Architects Studios

Comments / photos for the Maggie’s Cardiff Building design by Dow Jones Architects page welcome

The post Maggie’s Cardiff Building, Dow Jones Architects appeared first on e-architect.

#e-architect

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jobsearchineuk · 4 years ago

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techsciresearch · 4 years ago

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Australia Furniture Market to be dominated by the New South Wales & Australia Capital Territory Region During the Forecast Period

Rising disposable incomes and growth of real estate & hospitality industries is expected to drive the growth of Australia furniture market during the forecast period.

According to TechSci Research report, “Australia Furniture Market By Product Type (Home Furniture, Office Furniture and Institutional Furniture), By Point of Sale (Exclusive Showrooms, Supermarkets/Hypermarkets, Online and Others (Furniture Retail Outlets, Traditional Stores, etc.)), By Raw Material Type (Wood, Plastic, Metal and Others (Bamboo, Cane, etc)), By Company, By Region, Forecast & Opportunities, 2025”, Australia furniture market was valued USD 7.76 Million in 2019 and is predicted to be valued USD 8.78 Million by 2025. Consumer preferences across the country are changing with increasing number of customers opting to decorate and renovate their residences with modern furniture products that are in line with latest industry trends. This has pushed the manufacturers in furniture industry to invest in their own chain of exclusive retail stores and expand their product listing by including a variety of products in order to provide customers with a huge number of options to choose from. This has significantly increased the demand for high-value products and aided the market growth.

One of the major trends in Australia furniture market is “DIY”. The concept was introduced by IKEA across the globe, wherein the merchandise will be assembled by the customer himself/herself at his/her house. This has now become a way for furniture producers to decrease their transportation logistics costs, merchandise storage and persistent problem of physical damages occurring during transit. Online channel retailers have been able to decrease their overall overheads by approximately 20% for the merchandise like wall shelves and wall units by offering them in DIY format.

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Some of the major players operating in Australia Furniture market are IKEA Pty Limited, Steelcase Australia Pty. Ltd, Herman Miller (Aust.) Proprietary Limited, Haworth Australia Pty Limited, Greenlit Brands Pty Limited, HNI Corporation, Knoll Inc., Sebel Pty Ltd., Schiavello Group Pty. Ltd., Harvey Norman Holdings Limited, Bfx Australia Pty Ltd, Amart Furniture Pty Ltd, D D K Commercial Interiors Pty Ltd , Bentons Kitchens Pty Ltd, AKD Softwoods Pty Ltd, Chiswell Furniture Pty Ltd , Forty Winks Franchising Pty Ltd, Furnware Group Pty Ltd, Fuller Furniture and others. Due to emerging technological innovations across industries and rising trend of technological integration with all possible consumer products, many furniture manufactures are investing in research & development activities to launch smart furniture products. In tune with this trend, customers are also expecting more than just comfort from their furniture products. Demand of smart furniture that has integration of internet along with accessibility of charging ports has increased, especially from office furniture segment, to boost productivity at workplace as well as at residential spaces due to rising work from home culture. This coupled with increasing demand for smartly designed compact furniture products with multiple functions, especially for home, is further expected to propel Australia furniture market in the coming years.

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“Australia Capital Territory & New South Wales region is the major demand generating region in Australia furniture market. The region accounted for a total value share of over 34% in 2019, which is expected to grow further during the forecast period. Demand for residential as well as commercial spaces is witnessing a rise in areas like North Sydney, Chatswood, St Leonards, Macquarie Park, among others. The buyer interest in these territories is also increasing with rising investments from public as well as private sectors in residential and commercial segments.” said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

“Australia Furniture Market By Product Type (Home Furniture, Office Furniture and Institutional Furniture), By Point of Sale (Exclusive Showrooms, Supermarkets/Hypermarkets, Online and Others (Furniture Retail Outlets, Traditional Stores, etc.)), By Raw Material Type (Wood, Plastic, Metal and Others (Bamboo, Cane, etc)), By Company, By Region, Forecast & Opportunities, 2025”, has evaluated the future growth potential of Australia furniture market and provides statistics & information on market size, structure and future market growth. The report intends to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment decisions. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities in Australia furniture market.

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theoptimisticpatriot · 4 years ago

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Manchester, tier 3, and the centralisation of England

There is nothing new in the latest stand off.

First published on the LSE Politics Blog 21.10.20.

With the Manchester lockdown having been announced without an ‘agreement’ with mayor Andy Burnham, and with First Minister Mark Drakeford having confirmed a ‘fire-break’ lockdown in Wales, the contrasting powers of the devolved nations, England’s localities, and the union government could not have been made more obvious. Every English lockdown measure is imposed by the union government. Local leaders have no legal powers to veto or amend proposals. Any ability to extract extra cash reflects the government’s desire to see them share responsibility or blame, not a rational assessment of need.

The performative stand-off has provoked a new debate about England’s centralisation under the union government; yet every aspect of the current crisis has been seen many times before. For decades, England’s governance has been defined by management of the relationship between the centre and the local, the distribution of funding within England, the structures by which local areas are represented, the autonomous powers that they hold (or lack), and the inability of the union’s political culture to reflect the reality of multiple centres of power.

Local leaders resisting the proposed lockdown on Manchester didn’t want to accept a pre-determined set of actions decided in Whitehall, and certainly not without adequate funding. That Whitehall-defined relationship has dominated the thirty-year history of English devolution. Whether through nominated regional assemblies, government offices, or city regions and combined authorities, union policy under all three parties has been ‘elite co-option’: finding ways of engaging local stakeholders, including councils and business leaders, in delivering Westminster priorities. It has allowed little autonomy in setting different priorities to the centre and little significant control over resources.

Just as the union government has been slow to allow local public health to take the lead on test, track and trace, so it has long refused the powers needed to reshape local economies. Capital investment is tightly held by union ministers and regional transport never gets the consistent political and financial support given to HS1, HS2 and Cross-Rail. Metro-leaders have had little choice but to pursue city centre-focussed regeneration based in property and higher education, often to the detriment of surrounding towns.

Under the union, England is the most centralised nation in Europe (measured by the proportion of funds raised and dispersed locally). While the Barnett formula provides some relative protection to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there is no mechanism to ensure that England’s localities receive fair, needs-based funding. The union government has imposed the harshest austerity on England’s poorest areas, now including many with the highest Covid-19 infections and worst health status.

Conservative ministers representing constituencies with high infection rates are claimed to have avoided local lockdowns imposed in areas with lower infection rates. The varied outcomes of tier three negotiations appear to reflect whether the Conservatives have a strong electoral interests and loud local voices in the areas. Ministers were accused of intervening to divert regeneration funding towards Conservative marginal seats ahead of those with greater need. But union governments have always had a more or less unrestrained ability to act arbitrarily towards England’s localities.

Not only is the pandemic hitting the most deprived regions of England hardest – partly because of a London-centric decision to raise the lockdown when much of the North was still in wave one – but Conservative gains in ‘Red Wall’ seats give both major parties a strong interest in ‘speaking’ for the north. It is likely that a pan-northern identity and politics will grow. But the ‘north-south’ characterisation of England is much harder to sustain. More of England is outside the ‘north’ and ‘greater London’ than inside either and this England needs better government too. The ‘politics of the north’ can simply become special pleading for a better deal from the union government that implicitly accepts that real power will remain in London. To date, ‘levelling up’ is a Whitehall-led process, handing out dribs and drabs in finance to favoured projects in favourite constituencies. Nothing about it will change the pattern of de-industrialisation, financialisation and globalisation that has so tilted the economy towards the south-east.

It was significant that resistance was described by Health Secretary Matt Hancock as ‘party politics’ even though Burnham was supported by Conservative MPs and council leaders. Despite twenty years of devolved administrations and rhetoric about English devolution, union politics still lacks the mature political culture that can accept someone of a different political party as the legitimate elected representative of their nation or locality. This cloth-eared insensitivity to the needs of a multi-centred democracy is the biggest single threat to the union

All these problems stem, at root, from the embedded culture of British nationalist unionism. It has obstructed change in the past, and is what makes change now challenging. For London-centric think-tanks and those deeply immersed in Whitehall’s ways favour a revived regional agenda that, for all their real ambition, are likely to be no more successful than in the past. The English public remain deeply sceptical about regional assemblies, which always get far less support than any of the status quo, English Laws made only by English MPs, or an English Parliament.

The same public strongly prefer England being treated as one unit to regionalisation. This is quite compatible with seeing one’s own area as unfairly treated. So, while there is some support for further devolution to combined authorities, it suggests more explicit devolution of powers will have to go hand in hand with a commitment to transparent and fair funding across England. This real levelling up would be far easier in a booming economy with large tax surpluses – an unlikely scenario in the foreseeable future – and would require a union wide approach that would likely signal the end of the Barnett formula.

All would require a profound change in the way England itself is governed. Labour did not pursue real English devolution. The current government, the most aggressively British nationalist for decades, is attempting to overturn key elements of devolution through the Internal Market Bill. It is unlikely to let go of any central power over England. England remains the only part of the union to have had no consultation, let alone referendum, on how it is governed in the past twenty years.

____________________

Note: For further reading see relevant chapters here.

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newsnextnow · 4 years ago

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WSP, Copper Consultancy and Axis to support HyNet project | News HyNet North West aims to reduce emissions from industry, homes, transport and the power generation sector across the North West and North Wales, supporting clean economic growth and a transition to a low carbon economy.

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speedyanchorbouquet · 2 months ago

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Transport Managers in Wrexham

We can act as your transport manager ensuring that you comply with all transport regulations. As professional transport consultants we can help you manager your fleet throughout Wrexham, North Wales, Merseyside and the rest of the North West. As experienced transport managers we can provide all the transport management services you need reducing your costs. Please view the rest of this site for details of our services.

#Transport Managers in Wrexham #Transport Consultant Wrexham #Transport Managers North Wales

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architectnews · 3 years ago

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Maggie’s Centre Southampton General Hospital

Maggie’s Centre Southampton General Hospital Building, Architects, English Cancer Caring Centre, Hampshire Healthcare

Maggie’s Centre Southampton Building

Cancer Care Centre Project in Hampshire, Southern England design by AL_A led by Amanda Levete Architect

29 Jun 2021

Design: AL_A

Maggie’s centre Southampton designed by AL_A

Photos by Hufton + Crow

Maggie’s Centre Southampton General Hospital Building

AL_A Create An Oasis Of Calm In Hospital Grounds For Maggie’s Southampton

Tuesday 29 June 2021 – The latest Maggie’s cancer support centre at Southampton General Hospital, designed by award-winning architecture studio AL_A, will formerly open next month.

Maggie’s has 25 years of experience providing free cancer support and information in centres across the UK. The new centre, which transforms a corner of the hospital site previously used for car parking, offers support for the hospital’s specialist oncology unit, serving a population of 3.2 million people across the region.

A woodland oasis set in the grounds of the hospital’s suburban campus, almost three quarters of the site is given over to four distinct gardens that reflect the ecology of the nearby New Forest. Amanda Levete, Principal of AL_A, says: “We have imagined that a piece of garden has been transported from the New Forest into the midst of the hospital’s car park, bringing serenity and a bit of magic to the place.”

The building emerges from this naturalistic landscape with an almost ethereal clarity. The gardens are cut through by four walls that radiate from a large central space, defining more discrete spaces in each of the four corners. As in all Maggie’s centres, the kitchen table sits at the heart of the building; a skylight above brings daylight and sky views deep into the building. The private areas, including consulting rooms and quiet spaces, open onto the gardens through full-height glazed sliding doors which disappear into pockets in the walls, removing the boundaries between landscape and building.

The building’s skeleton, which extends outside of the building enclosure, is formed by the four blade walls made from ceramics. The earthiness of the clay colour roots the centre to the ground. The four corners are clad in a mottled stainless steel giving a dreamy reflection of the surrounding landscape, placing the garden front and centre. The structure itself seems to disappear as it reflects the surrounding trees and planting

The garden has been designed by award-winning landscape designer, Sarah Price, co-designer of the 2012 Gardens at the Olympic Park in east London. “There’s no doubt that looking at ‘nature’ has a positive impact on how we feel. The landscape is inspired by the New Forest, and draws its healing power from the rich diversity of the Forest’s flora: wood anemones, orchids, wild garlic, lesser celandines, bluebells and primroses, mosses and ferns, growing in the woodland pathways.”

Dame Laura Lee DBE, Chief Executive of Maggie’s, says: “I am absolutely thrilled with our newest centre designed by Amanda Levete and her team at AL_A. They have interpreted our brief beautifully and their exacting attention to detail has created a stunning building with large windows that flood the centre with natural light. Their play on inside and outside space and the close working relationship with landscaper Sarah Price has created a garden that will give people with cancer and our staff views of greenery on all sides. Intimate rooms allow for privacy whilst the communal spaces bring people together around a kitchen table to share their stories and support one another”.

AL_A

AL_A is the award-winning architecture studio founded in 2009 by the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete with directors Ho-Yin Ng, Alice Dietsch and Maximiliano Arrocet.

Collaborating with ambitious and visionary clients, they develop designs that are conceptualised not just as buildings, but as urban propositions – projects that express the identity of an institution, a city or even a nation.

Recently completed projects include two new buildings at Wadham College for the University of Oxford; in 2017 they completed the Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition Road Quarter London, the V&A’s largest building project in over 100 years, and Central Embassy – their largest project to date – a 140,000m2 luxury shopping mall and hotel in Bangkok on the former grounds of the British Embassy; in 2016 they celebrated the opening of MAAT, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, commissioned by EDP, one of the world’s foremost energy companies, and completed a 13-hectare media campus and 37,700m2 headquarters building for Sky in London.

Ongoing commissions include the expansion and redevelopment of Paisley Museum in Scotland; the reimagining of the D’Ieteren HQ in Brussels into a mixed-use piece of city; and the design of the first prototype magnetised target fusion facility in the world for the Canadian clean energy firm General Fusion.

Further information about AL_A is available at www.ala.uk.com.

Maggie’s Centres

Maggie’s has 25 years of experience providing free cancer support and information in centres across the UK. Built in the grounds of NHS cancer hospitals, the centres are warm and welcoming, and run by expert staff who help people live well with cancer.

Maggie’s has been supporting people with cancer throughout the coronavirus crisis over the phone, email and online. This support has helped people 239,000 times during 2020.

Maggie’s centres are open to see people. This support runs alongside our ongoing phone, email and digital support. The first centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996. Maggie’s now has 24 centres in the UK and a growing international network.

Maggie’s is funded by voluntary donations. Maggie’s President is HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. Maggie’s Chief Executive, Laura Lee was awarded a Damehood in 2020 for her services to people with cancer.

For more information visit maggies.org

Maggie’s Centre Southampton – Building Information

Project Credits

Architect: AL_A Landscape designer: Sarah Price Landscapes Engineering services: Arup Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine Ceramics: Cumella Planting: Hillier

Trade Contractors Groundworks: Shoreland Envelope: Cantifix Steelwork: Stephens & Stuarts M&E: Lowe & Oliver Ceramic wall construction: Chichester Stone

Photographs: Hufton + Crow

AL_A

Previously on e-architect:

6 Jan 2016

Maggie’s Southampton Centre – New Building

Maggie’s Southampton

Design: AL_A

image courtesy of AL_A, architects

Maggie’s Centre Southampton

Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres

Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre Buildings

Website: Maggie’s Southampton

Maggies Centre : Buildings

Location: Southampton, Hampshire, England, UK, north western Europe

Maggie’s Centre Buildings

Contemporary Maggie’s Centre Architecture in England

Maggie’s Nottingham, Central England Design: Piers Gough, CZWG Architects photo : Martine Hamilton Knight Maggie’s Nottingham Cancer Caring Centre

Maggie’s South West Wales Design: Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates with Garber & James Maggies Swansea Centre

Maggie’s Oxford, Southern England Design: Wilkinson Eyre Maggies Oxford Centre

Maggies Cotswolds, Cheltenham, Western England Design: MacCormac Jamieson Prichard Maggies Cotswolds, Cheltenham, western England

Maggie’s Cardiff, Wales Design: Dow Jones Architects Maggies Cardiff Centre

Southampton Building Designs

Southampton Buildings

Contemporary Architecture in Southampton

The Lookout, Lepe Country Park, Exbury, Southampton, Hampshire Design: Hampshire County Council Property Services photograph : Jim Stephenson The Lookout in Lepe Country Park

Boldrewood Innovation Campus, Southampton University, Burgess Road Design: Grimshaw image courtesy of architects Boldrewood Innovation Campus at Southampton University

Comments / photos for the Maggie’s Centre Southampton General Hospital – Hampshire Healthcare Building design by AL_A page welcome

Website: Maggie’s Centres

The post Maggie’s Centre Southampton General Hospital appeared first on e-architect.

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Montara Hospitality Unveils Details of Tri Vananda Wellness Project in Phuket

Thailand's Montara Hospitality Group has unveiled plans to develop a comprehensive health and wellness residential community in Phuket, Thailand. Scheduled for completion in 2022, Montara is investing over THB 6,600 million (USD 220 million) in the development of Tri Vananda, which they say will be one of Asia’s largest and most comprehensive wellness residential communities. Tri Vananda will feature 298 villas, anchored by a wellness resort specializing in integrative and functional medicine and cognitive wellbeing, in a sprawling hillside setting dotted with lakes and gardens 20 minutes from Phuket International Airport. Tri Vananda's health center will offer consultation rooms, physiotherapy and TCM treatment rooms, a cognitive health center, and facilities for health diagnostics aimed at treating residents and guests with tailored programs.

A mindfulness center on the lake will have an indoor hall and outdoor areas for meditation. Also situated on the lake will be a spa with thermal rooms, relaxation areas, a hammam, private spa suites, and a fitness center with a 50-meter swimming pool, gym, sauna, juice bar and lake pier for recreational water sports. Finally, a dedicated club designed for children will help to foster a wellness-led lifestyle for younger community members. Two and three-bedroom solar-powered residential villas ranging in size from 270 square meters to 750 square meters have been designed by Habita Architects, renowned for their nature-focused work, together with Arsom Silp Institute of the Arts. The teams in both firms are led by National Artists and UNESCO-recognised architects. Interior design will be helmed by the award-winning P49 Deesign. “With the future in mind, Tri Vananda will be a multigenerational community rooted in a way of life based on the principles of wellness, sustainability and hospitality. Here, our residents and guests will enjoy some of the most fundamental and cherished attributes for overall wellbeing like clean air and nature, which are increasingly lost in urban settings, while having access to proven health and wellness therapies and programs,” said Montara's CEO, Kittisak Pattamasaevi. Villa sales start in July 2020. See latest Travel News, Interviews, Podcasts and other news regarding: Wellness, Montara, Phuket. Headlines: Singapore Airlines Reduces Capacity; Warns of More Cuts to Come Airbus Pauses Production in France and Spain Banyan Tree Finds Treasure in Myanmar Vietnam Airlines Suspends Flights to France and Malaysia South East Asia Needs to Urgently Scale-Up Fight Against COVID19 Air Cargo Essential to Fight Against COVID19 Pandemic Bangkok Airways Increases COVID19 Screening in Samui, Sukhothai and Trat United Airlines Cuts International Flights by 85% APG Airlines Joins IATA and Receives IOSA Certification Accor Signs 24-Pool Villa Resort in Phuket, Thailand Thai Airways Updates Flexible Fare Rules on Tickets Booked in UK and Ireland Air New Zealand to Reduce Capacity by 85% Finnair to Cut Capacity by 90% Qantas / Jetstar to Cut International Capacity by 90% Cathay Pacific Reports February Traffic; Will Reduce Capacity by 90% Sabre Appoints Otto Gergye as VP/RGM North Asia - Travel Solutions Airline Sales 137 Pillars Appoints Anne Arrowsmith as Corporate GM Oakwood Appoints Lina Abdullah as RGM Hong Kong Welcomed Just 199,000 Visitor Arrivals in February SAS to Halt Most Traffic; Layoff 90% of Workforce HKIA Handled 1.9m Pax and 18,005 Flight Movements in February Singapore Airlines Waives Rebooking Fees American Airlines Suspends All Remaining Flights to Asia EC Needs to Suspend 80-20 Airport Slots Rule Until October Vietnam Airlines to Transport Passengers from Europe to Vietnam Etihad Airways Suspends More Flights Pictures from Miss International Queen 2020 in Pattaya, Thailand IATA Reacts to US Ban on Travellers from Europe Finnair Cancels All Flights to USA and Delhi, India Qatar Airways Offers FFP Tier Status Extension Ansat Helicopters Approved to Carry Neonatal Medical Module American Airlines Outlines Changes to Europe and South America Flights Eric Martel to Return to Bombardier as President and CEO Okura Prestige Bangkok Launches Thai Residents Promotion Finalists from Canada, Italy and UK Selected for Airbus GEDC Diversity Award COVID19: US Bans ALL Travel from Europe Vietnam Airlines to Reduce Flights to Europe WTTC Postpones Global Summit in Cancun, Mexico COVID19: AirAsia Adds Flexibility for Passengers to Change Tickets Stephane Gras Appointed GM of Two Four Seasons Hotels in France Mövenpick Hotel Apartments Downtown Dubai Opens Onsen Spa Akaryn Hotels & Resorts Launches Travel Trade Promotion CAAS Implements New Measures for Business Jets Flying to Singapore COVID19: Thai Airways to Cancel Italy Flights Accor to Take Over Historic Carton House in Ireland Vietnam Airlines to Check Temperature of All Passengers Departing Europe Rosaviatsiya Certifies Emergency Flotation System on Ansat Helicopters Don Mueang and Suvarnabhumi Airports Increase COVID19 Surveillance Etihad Airways to Launch Daily Flights to Vienna, Austria Heathrow Introduces New Charges for Night Time Flights Pictures from Miss International Queen 2020 in Pattaya, Thailand North Wales Tourism - Interview with Jim Jones, CEO Dusit Launches Special Travel Trade Rates COVID19: Cebu Pacific Changes Rebooking Policy Montara Hospitality Unveils Details of Tri Vananda Wellness Project in Phuket Qatar Airways Launches More Flexible Booking Policy for Travellers Thai Airways Causes Confusion with COVID19 Certificate Requirement ACI Reveals World's Best Airports for Customer Experience Marriott Opens First Aloft Hotel in Bali, Indonesia Thai Airways Cancels International Flights in Asia and Europe Bangkok Airways Makes Major Changes to Domestic and Int. Flight Schedules Air Astana Makes Changes to Int. Flight Schedules Finnair to Increase Use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel Airbus to Showcase A220, A350-900 and H145 at Wings India Women's and Men's Rugby Africa Cup 2020 to Take Place at Same Time Pictures from Miss International Queen 2020 in Pattaya, Thailand IATA Updates Analysis of Financial Impact of COVID19 Outbreak Capella Launches New Hotel Brand 15,000 Athletes Expected at Laguna Phuket Marathon 2020 Starlux Airlines Signs Distribution Agreement with Sabre Korean Air Expands Temperature Checks to All Flights Departing Incheon IDeaS Launches RevPlan Singapore Airlines Cargo Renews CEIV Pharma Certification; Expands Network Accor Opens Mövenpick Resort Waverly Phu Quoc Saving the Elephants of Thailand - Interview with John Roberts, GTAEF Aviation: COVID19 Hits January Passenger Demand Aman to Launch New Hotel Brand SITA Looks at How 5G Will Help to Transform Airports COVID19: Finnair Makes Major Changes to Network and Resources Air Cargo Demand Down 3.3% in January British Airways Trials Autonomous Electric Mobility Devices at JFK American Express GBT Appoints Mike Qualantone as Chief Revenue Officer Thai Airways Extends Ticket Change Fee Waiver to More Flights SilkAir to Suspend Hiroshima Flights Indefinitely FlyArystan to Launch 8 Routes from New Karaganda Base Aerobility to Expand Fleet with Former MOD Vigilant T1 Gliders CWT Appoints David Pitts as VP Revenue and Global Supplier Management COVID19: British Airways Launches Book with Confidence Policy Bombardier Offers 4G In-Cabin Wi-Fi as Retrofit on Learjet Aircraft Thai Airways Reports 2019 Operating Results Universal Avionics' ClearVision EFVS with SkyLens HWD Certified by EASA Minor to Operate Clinique La Prairie's First Medical Spa Outside of Europe Royal Thai Navy Wins Elephant Boat Race for Second Year IATA Requests Global Suspension of Slot Rules Due to COVID19 Outbreak Air Astana Takes Delivery of Second Airbus A321LR Vistara Expands Partnership with Sabre Shinta Mani Wild Appoints Tim Pheak as Executive Chef Aeroflot Takes Delivery of First Airbus A350 Vietnam Airlines to Suspend All Flights to South Korea Pictures from Elephant Boat Race and Bangkok River Festival 2020 Accor Opens Second ibis Styles Hotel in Vietnam AirAsia Thailand Receives IOSA Certification Travelport Achieves Level 4 NDC Aggregator Certification Qatar Airways Opens Premium Lounge at Changi Airport British Airways Expands NDC Offering Steven Phillips Appointed GM of LUX* Grand Baie Resort in Mauritius Russian Helicopters Delivers First Mi-38 Asia Pacific Airlines Carried 33.8m Int. Pax in January Delta Reduces Seoul Flights; Delays Manila Launch Finnair to Increase Flights to Delhi and Los Angeles Thai Smile Becomes Second Connecting Partner of Star Alliance ANA to Add 15 More Boeing 787 Dreamliners to Fleet Airbus Helicopters Appoints Thomas Hundt as EVP - Finance First Pratt & Whitney GTF Engine Produced in Japan Joins Flight Tests Air Malta and Qatar Airways to Codeshare Susan Doniz to Join Boeing as CIO / SVP IT and Data Analytics AirAsia to Resume Manila - Saigon Flights; Launch Clark - Tagbilaran COVID19: Qantas and Jetstar Make Major Changes to Network Air Astana Changes Ticket Rules for Travellers from HK, JP, MO, SG, KR and TH Hong Kong Int. Airport Introduces New Round of Relief Measures Russian Helicopters to Commence Production of Ansat Aurus Hong Kong Win Bronze at Inaugural World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger Series Bangkok Airways Partners AXAThailand to Offer 'Protective Wing' ANA to Test Autonomous Mobility Assistance at Narita Airport Green Light for MotoGP in Buri Ram, Thailand Aviation: COVID19 Cuts Demand and Revenues Martin Dell Returns Home as GM of Four Seasons Hotel Prague SWISS Takes Delivery of First A320neo Sabre's Sean Menke to Participate in Keynote Interview at ITB Berlin Executive Appointments at Outrigger Hospitality CWT Appoints Linda Creighton as Vice President - Business Finance Hilton to Open Garden Inn Hotel at Adventure Parc Snowdonia, North Wales AirAsia Philippines to Launch Flights to Zamboanga from Cebu and Clark Swiss-Belhotel Opens First Hotel in Malaysia Joanne Taylor Joins FCM as Director of Account Management Asia Thai Airways Waives Fees on Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan Flights SalamAir Partners Tune Protect for Travel Insurance American Airlines to Expand Preordered Meal Service Etihad Airways to Launch TravelPass AirAsia to Launch Flights from Clark and Cebu to General Santos, Philippines MICE in North Wales - Interview with Richard Jones of venue cymru, Llandudno Air New Zealand Extends Reduction in Flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai Patrick de Castelbajac to Join Nordic Aviation Capital as CEO Thai Airways Opens New Lounge at Phuket Airport Bulgaria Air and Qatar Airways to Codeshare Tarom Takes Delivery of First of Nine ATR 72-600s Whitbread Signs Sixth Premier Inn Hotel in Ireland Mandarin Oriental Jumeira Dubai Opens Royal Penthouse COVID19: Zero Risk and Travel Advisories - Where Do We Stop? Campbell Wilson to Rejoin Scoot as CEO MIAT to Implement Sabre's Global Demand Data Solution Cathay Pacific Carried 3M Pax in Jan; Reduces Flight Capacity by 40% Roger Brantsma Joins 825-Room Hilton Tokyo as General Manger Thai Airways Increases Passenger Screening on Flights from Cambodia Mandarin Oriental Boston to Complete US$ 15 Million Renovation in April Erica Antony Joins CWT as Chief Product Officer Bjoern van den Oever Joins Alila Villas Koh Russey as Executive Chef Unicorn Hospitality Opens 47-Room Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand Hong Kong Airport Handled 5.7 Million Passengers in January Vietnam Airlines Adds Wide-Body Aircraft to Hanoi - Saigon Route Pratt & Whitney GTF Engines to Power Korean Air's New A321neos AsBAA Appoints Jeff Chiang as Chief Operating Officer Psychometrics at Naruna Retreats in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand Airbus A330-800 Receives Type Certification from EASA and FAA Hamza Sehili Joins Four Seasons Tunis as Hotel Manager British Airways and Royal Air Maroc to Codeshare Green Africa Airways Signs MOU for 50 Airbus A220-300s Hong Kong Visitor Arrivals Plummet to Below 3,000 Per Day What Does Tourism Mean to Conwy, North Wales? Interview with Mayor Thai Airways Launches Promotion for Royal Orchid Plus Members Dusit Thani Abu Dhabi Upgrades Rooms and MICE Facilities FlyArystan to Launch New Routes, Expand Capacity from Almaty, Kazakhstan Finnair Extends Suspension of Flights to China; Reduces HK Service SAS Extends Suspension of Flights to China Air Astana to Launch Flights to Mumbai, India HK7s and Singapore Sevens Rescheduled Sustainable Inspiration from Farmer Gareth Wyn Jones in North Wales Phuket to Host Thailand Travel Mart (TTM+) 2020 in June Thailand: Did Strength of Thai Baht Affect Number of Arrivals from UK in 2019? Seaplanes in Thailand? Interview with Dennis Keller, CBO of Siam Seaplane Future of Airline Distribution and NDC - Interview with Yanik Hoyles, IATA Cambodia Airways Interview with Lucian Hsing, Commercial Director HD Videos and Interviews Podcasts from HD Video Interviews Travel Trade Shows in 2019, 2020 and 2021 High-Res Picture Galleries Travel News Asia - Latest Travel Industry News Read the full article

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ourmusicmaker · 5 years ago

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The Rubaiyat of E.Joyce Francis

The Rubaiyat of E. Joyce Francis

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Astronomer–Poet of Persia, Translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald with “engraved headpieces by E. Joyce Francis”, was published as no.6 of the Ebenezer Baylis Booklets, in Worcester in 1934 (1). It was a limited edition of 500 copies. Using FitzGerald’s first edition, it contained five headpieces and one tailpiece, these being shown as Figs.1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e & 1f. Mostly the illustrations seem to be generic rather than related to specific verses, though Fig.1a is clearly the dawn associated with the opening verse, and Fig.1f clearly depicts the turning down of an empty glass in the closing verse. Fig.1e, for example, is clearly a generic depiction of Omar and his Beloved, in the booklet somewhat incongruously located towards the end of the Potter’s Shop interlude. Again, Fig.1b could refer either to verse 33 (“Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried...”) or to verse 52 (“And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky...”), neither of which is anywhere near the illustration. The colophon of the booklet is shown in Fig.1g. This lists the consultant–typographer as Leonard Jay, whose name we shall encounter later in connection with the Birmingham School of Printing. We shall have more to say about the other books she illustrated in this series below, but meanwhile, who was E. Joyce Francis ?

Biographical

There is little or no information readily available about her and her work. She gets no mention at all in either Brigid Peppin’s and Lucy Micklethwait’s Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: the 20th Century (1983) or in Alan Horne’s Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators (1994). Nor is she mentioned in Albert Garrett’s book A History of British Wood Engraving (1978). But thanks to some online research of ancestry records, and more particularly, thanks to contacts with her daughter–in–law, Sylvia Goodborn; her niece, Barbara Chisholm; with Joyce’s friend of many years, John Perfect, and his wife Sue; and with Jane Dew, who likewise knew Joyce for many years, we can rectify that.

Eleanor Joyce Francis was born in West Bromwich on 6th June 1904. In the 1911 census we find her, age 6, living with her family at 57 Bayswater Road, Handsworth, Birmingham. Curiously her name is spelt Elinor on the census return (as it is elsewhere, for that matter – see below – though on her birth certificate it is Eleanor.) Her father is Harry Morris Francis, age 38, an Assistant Secretary at the Birmingham and Midland Institute (the BMI still exists today); her mother Charlotte Francis, is also age 38; and she has an older sister, Margery Francis, age 10. The family is prosperous enough to have a general servant or domestic called Rachel Williams, aged 47.

Joyce (for so she was familiarly known) attended Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts between 1921 and 1935, but with a gap in her studies in the year 1924–5 (the academic year ran from September of one year to the end of August the next), and another between 1927 and 1929. (No–one seems to know what she did in the gaps.) Records there show that she studied elementary art in 1921–2; general drawing in 1922–3; book illustration in 1923–4; craft in 1925–6; wood cuts in 1926–7; and drawing & painting in 1933–4. Details for the other years she attended the School are scant, unfortunately, being restricted to enrolment date and such like. As for the somewhat vague heading of crafts, it would appear that it included book–binding, pottery and textiles. Her skills in book illustration and the creation of wood cuts, were, of course, put to good use in the Ebenezer Baylis booklets mentioned above, and of which we shall have more to say below. During the period 1921–1933 she was living with her family at 152 Hamstead Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, but sometime during the academic year 1932–3, the family moved to 82 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, where they were still living in 1935 (2).

In the third quarter of 1938 Joyce married Arthur Thomas Goodborn in Birmingham, and though she was now Eleanor Joyce Goodborn she continued to use Eleanor Joyce Francis as her professional name. In the 1939 electoral roll the couple are recorded as living at 8 Colinette Road, Putney. London SW15, for reasons possibly connected to her husband’s family – he had been born in Lambeth, London in 1905. In the second quarter of 1939 their daughter Marianne was born in Wandsworth. Some time after that they moved to Loughborough, where her husband was the Senior Tutor in the Department of Teacher Training at Loughborough College. It was in Loughborough that their son John was born in November 1943. Some time after that, they moved to Birmingham, where he had been appointed the Arts and Crafts Inspector for Schools in the Birmingham area, and where she was to teach Arts and Crafts in the Education Department of Birmingham University. Of their two children, Marianne was to remain unmarried, dying in 1998, as we shall see, but John, who died in 2016, was to marry twice. Sylvia being his second wife, she only got to know Joyce from 1973, by which time Joyce had left Birmingham to live in Wales, on which more presently.

As for Joyce’s husband, Arthur Thomas Goodborn, he died in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1952, aged only 46. Probate records give the couple’s address as 35 Wyecliffe Road, Handsworth, his effects of £5425 16s 6d being left to his widow, Elinor (sic) Joyce Goodborn – not a fortune, but quite a lot of money in those days.

A number of photographs of Joyce have survived, and one of particular note is that of Fig.2a. It is undated, but has the feel of the 1960s about it, and shows Joyce teaching a pottery class (presumably at the University.) The photo was supplied by Sylvia Goodborn, who describes it as “absolutely her.” For comparison, the photograph of Joyce in Fig.2b was taken at Jane Dew’s wedding in 1968. The somewhat dark photograph of Joyce shown in Fig.2c, supplied by Barbara Chisholm, was clearly taken much later, probably at Cae Newydd (of which more below.) Barbara also supplied the photo of Joyce as a little girl, shown here as Fig.2d.

In the late 1950s John Perfect met Joyce through the Youth Fellowship of St Michael’s Church, Handsworth, where she often used to give talks about art. He was in his mid–teens at the time with ambitions to go to art school, so they had something in common and struck up a lasting friendship. (Sue Perfect, incidentally, got to know Joyce somewhat later, from about 1968.)

According to John, St Michael’s Church and Joyce’s talks were attended by the professional people that lived in the Handsworth of those days – doctors, journalists, business people and such like.

Handsworth was a safe Tory seat. The MP was Sir Edward Boyle whose idea of electioneering was to cruise round the area, waving from his Rolls Royce.

As for 35 Wyecliffe Road, it was “a large semi–detached house of an art nouveau style, probably built in the twenties or early thirties.” It is still there today.

Jane Dew told me:

I met Joyce and her daughter and son in the late 1950s when my parents moved back to Birmingham from South Devon. Joyce lived in the same road (Wyecliffe Road) and my mother soon made friends with her. I was still at Secondary School but Joyce knew l really wanted to train in the Arts.

She regularly taught me, informally, techniques and history, lending me books and taking me to exhibitions. She knew a wide range of people and her house was regularly full of musicians, actors and artists. I made friends with her daughter, older than me by a decade, and her son, just a few years older than me.

But, John goes on:

Joyce didn’t care for Birmingham and for some time before I knew her she and her husband had rented a cottage on the hilltop behind Aberdovey in Wales. Called Cae Newydd, it is clearly marked on the ordnance survey map for the area.

Jane adds that Joyce and her husband began to rent Cae Newydd in the early years of World War 2, so that if Birmingham was bombed, the family had a safe haven. Come the late 1950s, Jane adds:

Knowing l missed the countryside, she invited me to stay with them during the school holidays.

I stayed with them for many years and grew to love the area. I regularly accompanied Joyce, with her son, to deliver her paintings to galleries, and help with the unpacking/packing. She also allowed me to draw in her studio, sitting away from each other and working in comparative silence!

She was immensely generous and encouraging, especially when l gained a place at Birmingham College of Art & Crafts (now Birmingham City University). My career as an embroiderer was greatly influenced by Joyce, and I remember her showing me how to design a repeat lino/woodcut to produce an effect like that shown here (Fig.3).

Aberdovey (or Aberdyfi as it is known now) is on the west coast of Wales, about 8 miles north of Aberystwyth. After her husband’s death she continued to rent the cottage, and to stay there as often as she could escape from Birmingham. As for getting back and forth between Birmingham and Aberdovey, John tells us:

Transport was a problem and she bought a succession of rather scruffy vans and cars. She’d load her painting gear into them and take off. Amazingly they never let her down, though she did have a man who maintained them for her. By far the nicest was a Ford ten of late 40’s vintage that had a wood–panelled body that used to be described as a shooting–brake or woody style. I remember the bonnet being opened to reveal an engine that appeared to be smaller than the battery; also, it had pre–war pattern, rod–operated brakes, so it was fortunate that it didn’t go very fast.

John’s first trip to Cae Newydd was in one of Joyce’s vans, when he was in his late teens, and he was to visit it many times thereafter. On occasion he even looked after the cottage, when Joyce was away teaching in Birmingham. His picture of the cottage, done from a photograph taken in about 1980, is shown in Fig.4.

His pen–picture of Joyce back then is wonderful and tallies with Figs.2a & 2b:

She was a woman of ample proportions and wore her long grey hair tied in a bun at the back. She wore long, floppy skirts, frilly blouses, often fastened with a cameo brooch, and a man’s wrist–watch that had probably belonged to her husband. All very Margaret Rutherford.

In 1960 Cae Newydd came up for sale and Joyce bought it. It was, shall we say, very basic – there was no running water (that had to be brought in from a nearby stream, and boiled before use), and there was no electricity supply until poles were put up for the farms in the area in the early 1960s. Thus for quite some time there were only oil lamps for lighting, for example, and log fires for heating. As for the toilet, it was a slate–built shed outside the cottage. A mountain stream entered and exited through holes in the walls, and there was a wooden seat by way of luxury. Joyce apparently referred to it as having a “two hole perpetual flush.” But to her the cottage was idyllic and she regarded it is her spiritual home. John goes on:

To get on with Joyce it was necessary to pass the Cae Newydd test. Those who liked the place despite its privations were in. Those who didn’t, and they were many, were regarded rather differently.

But in 1973, finances dictated that if she wanted to keep Cae Newydd, Joyce had to sell her Birmingham home. With her daughter, Marianne, she moved to Aberdovey, and bought a small shop in New Street there which also had living accommodation. There, they opened what we would now call an Arts & Crafts café, in which they sold a variety of home–made goods as well as pictures by Joyce. Sue Perfect told me:

I remember the goods at the tearoom as being mostly the patchwork quilts, the woollen blankets and the occasional rag rug. The material was mainly recycled not the sort of material one can buy on a bale. Ultimately it was a source that would sooner or later outstrip supply but for the while the tweeds were matched and separated from the cottons so that the finished article was colour and weight matched. The rag rug pieces were poked and drawn through individually onto hessian or sacks, not the prepared backs that one can purchase from craft shops today. Joyce and Marianne were incredibly resourceful and would use anything that would bring a creative pleasure to them and others.

To this account of early recycling, Jane Dew added that the blankets were knitted from wool which in part had been collected from the wire fences of nearby farms, having been scratched off the backs of passing sheep!

Joyce also used to run craft workshops there – patchwork and spinning were two popular examples. The café side of things was run by Marianne. The business was very successful, but neither Joyce nor her daughter were temperamentally suited to a 9 to 5 lifestyle, and, at least on the arts and crafts front, demand rapidly outran supply – at one point Joyce sold the quilt off her own bed to one insistent customer. So, having made sufficient money, Joyce decided to sell the shop and spend the proceeds on Cae Newydd. That was when the real problems began.

Cae Newydd was, as already indicated, one of those homes which sounds idyllic, and indeed was so, for a short stay in summer. But in the winter, with wind, rain & snow blowing in from Cardigan Bay, it was cold, damp, and with no running water and only a primitive outside toilet, it was far from idyllic. The stresses and strains eventually had their effect. Joyce suffered a major stroke and was admitted on a permanent basis to Towyn Hospital, where she died in 1985. Marianne stayed on, but she too was “eventually invalided out” (as John puts it), and she died in the same hospital as her mother in 1998.

Joyce was an active member of the Aberdovey / Aberdyfi Art Society, which still exists today. Unfortunately, despite diligent enquiries by Stewart Jones, Kate Coldham and others, none of the current membership approached remembered much if anything about Joyce, which is perhaps not surprising given that she died over thirty years ago.

Books Illustrated: the Birmingham School of Printing

Joyce was closely associated with the Birmingham School of Printing, which was housed in the Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts, in Margaret Street, in the city centre. (In 1971 the School of Arts and Crafts was absorbed into Birmingham Polytechnic and subsequently into Birmingham City University, the Margaret Street building now being BCU’s Department of Fine Art.) Prominent in its history was Leonard Jay.

Jay was born in Bungay, Suffolk in 1888 into a family which had been much involved in printing. His family moved to London in 1893, and by 1905 he had left school and become an apprentice printer. In 1912 he joined the part–time staff of the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts, becoming a full time member of staff in 1924. He was appointed as the first head of the Birmingham School of Printing in 1925, a post he held until he retired in 1953. He died in 1963 (3a). Under Jay’s overall direction, students, guided by their teachers, produced no less than 192 books and pamphlets between 1926 and 1953 (3b), these including three editions of The Rubaiyat (3c).

In the 1930s Joyce produced illustrations for six booklets for the Birmingham School of Printing. Perhaps not surprisingly, three centre on John Baskerville (1706–1775), who is principally known today as the Birmingham–based printer and designer of typefaces.

Baskerville is worthy of an Omarian aside. Despite being a confirmed atheist, in 1763 he printed what was to become one of the classic editions of the Bible. It was, of course, an exercise in Printing, not Devotion – with equal ‘piety’ he had printed an equally classic edition of Horace in 1762. (I can sympathise with that: my own religious views are similar, yet I wrote a book on religious medals.) But of greater interest is the fact that, in accordance with his wishes, when Baskerville died in 1775 he was buried, in an upright position, beneath a conical monument of his own design (formerly a windmill, apparently), deliberately situated in the unconsecrated ground of his own estate. This was, as the epitaph of his own composition made clear, in protest at “the Idle Fears of Superstition and the Wicked Arts of Priesthood.” Alas, in 1821, he turned out to be in the way of an ongoing canal construction: his monument was dismantled, and his body was, to cut a lengthy story short, moved, in defiance of his wishes, to the consecrated ground of the crypt of Christ Church, Birmingham. Arguably Baskerville got his revenge, though, for in 1897 the church had to be demolished. Unfortunately, his revenge was short–lived, for his body was then moved to a vault under the chapel of the Church of England Warstone Lane Cemetery, again in consecrated ground (4a). There matters rested until 1963, in which year a petition was presented to Birmingham City Council arguing that the wishes of one of their most prominent citizens should be respected, and that his remains should be removed to unconsecrated ground. After all, it wasn’t just Baskerville's wishes that had to be respected: it was argued that the devout Christians alongside whom Baskerville had been buried might not like the idea of having an atheist in their midst! Alas, the petition seems to have been signed by only about a dozen people, none of whom was related to the deceased, so the Council decided, in view of the difficultes involved in finding some legally suitable unconsecrated ground, to leave poor Baskerville where he was, atheist or not (4b)

But to return to the publications of the Birmingham School of Printing, the three Baskerville booklets in which Joyce had a hand were, in order of publication date:

Letters of the famous 18th century printer, John Baskerville of Birmingham: together with a bibliography of works printed by him at Birmingham collected, compiled and printed under the direction of Leonard Jay(1932), for which Joyce did the frontispiece portrait of Baskerville (Fig.5a). (The portrait is seemingly based on a 1774 portrait of Baskerville by James Millar in Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery.) (4c)

Dr Hans H. Bockwitz, Baskerville in Letters, translated by Herbert Woodbine (1933). The cover illustration was as in Fig.5a, but printed in red ink on a pale blue background (Fig.5b).

Dr Hans Bockwitz, John Baskerville in the Judgement of German Contemporaries, translated by A.B. Hill (1937). The cover illustration was as in Fig.5a.

The three other booklets illustrated by Joyce for the Birmingham School of Printing were, again in order of publication date:

William Shakespeare – Venus and Adonis (1934). Its fine front cover is shown in Fig.6a and its four headpieces by Joyce are shown in Fig.6b, 6c, 6d & 6e. These are my personal favourites amongst Joyce’s book illustrations. Curiously this booklet does not appear in either of the bibliographies cited in note (3b).

Benjamin Walker, Saint Philip’s Church Birmingham, and its Groom–Porter Architect (1935), for which Joyce did the frontispiece (Fig.7).

William Bennett, Richard Greene, the Lichfield Apothecary & his Museum of Curiosities (1935), for which Joyce did the cover portrait of Richard Greene (Fig.8). This was one of a series titled Johnsoniana: Dr. Samuel Johnson & his friends, though Joyce only illustrated this one.

Books Illustrated: Ebenezer Baylis & Son, Worcester

Ebenezer Erskine Baylis, the founder of the firm in 1858, was born in Worcester in 1834 and died in London in 1920. In the census return for 1851, living with his family in Worcester; he is recorded as being a printer’s apprentice. In 1856, in the Parish Church of Edgbaston, Birmingham, he married Sarah Elizabeth Lane, also born in Worcester. At the time of the marriage, he was a printer living in Birmingham. Their first child, Marion Jesse Baylis, was born in Birmingham in 1857. Shortly after, in 1858, as noted above, he founded his printing firm. In the 1861 census, he and Sarah were now living in their own house in Worcester. Besides their daughter Marion, they now had a son, Frank Edwin Baylis (born in 1859.) In the Census Return Ebenezer is listed as a Printer Compositor. At the time of the 1871 census, they were still living in Worcester, though at a different address, Ebenezer being recorded as a printer employing three boys. By now, besides Marion and Frank, they had another son Ralph Archibald Baylis (born 1865), plus another daughter, Ruth L. G. Baylis (born in 1866).

It was Frank Edwin Baylis who was to become the “Son” in “Ebenezer Baylis and Son.” By the time of the 1911 census he was a master printer, bookbinder and wholesale stationer in Worcester, married with five children, three of whom seem to have been employed in the family business. As noted above, Ebenezer Baylis died in 1920, and in 1924 the firm, now with Frank Edwin Baylis as its director, was registered as a limited company. He was to die in 1935, after which the business seems to have passed to his son, Frank Russell Baylis, who by the time of the 1911 census, at the age of 22, was already a master printer, and who was listed as the second major shareholder, after his father, in the application for limited company status in 1924. The two other lesser shareholders were two of Frank Edwin’s other children, Clifford Erskine Baylis, Printer, and Marion Dora White Baylis, Cashier.

The firm continued under the name of Ebenezer Baylis and Son Ltd until 2001, after which its history need not concern us.

Our main concern here, of course, is with the series of twelve Ebenezer Baylis Booklets published between 1933 and 1935 (5), years after the death of Ebenezer, as follows:

No.1 – Fine Printing by Leonard Jay (1933) No.2 – Christmas by Washington Irving (1933) No.3 – Baskerville in Letters by Dr. Bockwitz (1934) No.4 – ABC by Geoffrey Chaucer (1934) No.5 – Parables taken from the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible (1934) No.6 – Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1934) No.7 – The Book of Ruth (1934) No.8 – Gray’s Elegy (1934) No.9 – Preface to Milton’s Paradise Lost by John Baskerville (1935) No.10 – Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton (1935) No.11 – Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (1935)/p No.12 – The Bible in Type by John Stone (1935)

All of these were published in association with the above-mentioned Leonard Jay of the Birmingham School of Printing, no.3 being essentially a reprint of the booklet published a year earlier by the School, and mentioned in the last section. Joyce contributed illustrations to six of the booklets as follows:

For no.2 she did a woodcut as a headpiece for the first page (Fig.9)

For no.3 she did the front cover illustration (effectively Fig.5b)

For no.4 she did a woodcut for the front cover (Fig.10)

For no.6, as we have seen already, she did six illustrations (Figs.1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e & 1f)

For no.7 she did four woodcuts (Figs.11a, 11b, 11c & 11d)

For no.11 she did the frontispiece (Fig.12)

An interesting aside, relevant to the firm though not to Joyce, is perhaps worth mentioning here. In 1934, the firm of Ebenezer Baylis & Son, who by then had a London office in EC1, were involved in a libel case at the High Court of Justice, Hodgkinson v. Powys and Others. John Cowper Powys was the author of a novel, A Glastonbury Romance, published by John Lane, the Bodley Head Ltd, and printed by Ebenezer Baylis & Son Ltd. Capt. G.W. Hodgkinson thought that the rather dissolute character, Philip Crow, in this ‘saucy novel’, might be unjustifiably identified with him, as indeed he might given the details, though it is clear that any resemblance was purely accidental. Author, publisher and printer readily expressed unintended liability, great regret, and settled out of court (6).

What is not clear at the present time is how the company of Ebenezer Baylis & Son came to be associated with Leonard Jay and the Birmingham School of Printing. By the time Jay took up his post in Birmingham in 1925, Ebenezer Baylis had been dead for some years, and his son Frank Baylis was in charge. As indicated above, Ebenezer spent some time in Birmingham, and presumably had (family ?) connections there. This plus the common involvement in printing, may explain the connection between the firm and Jay. It may well be, too, as Caroline Archer of the Typographic Hub at Birmingham City University has suggested, that the firm, which was apparently a sponsor / supporter of the Birmingham School of Printing, took some of its apprentices from the School. However, at the moment no precise details are available.

Books Illustrated: Other

It is interesting that all of the foregoing works illustrated by Joyce were done in the 1930s. With one exception, to which we will turn later, I know of no work illustrated by her later than the Baskerville booklet, mentioned above, published in 1937. Whether this had anything to do with her marriage in 1938 and the birth of her daughter in 1939, I do not know, but certainly, back then, when women artists married and started a family, art sometimes took something of a back seat, though, as we shall see, Joyce certainly continued to paint.

Besides the illustrated works listed in the last two sections, there are only two other books illustrated by Joyce that I know of.

The first is of a totally different nature to any of the foregoing: Boccaccio’s Decameron, produced in two hefty volumes, printed at the Shakespeare Head Press, Saint Aldates, Oxford, and published for the Press by Basil Blackwell – vol.1 in 1934 and vol.2 in 1935 (again in the 1930s, note.) It was a limited edition of 325 copies (of which 300 were for sale), with another 3 copies printed on vellum. It was a sumptuous and exclusive edition, in other words, which today fetches high prices.

As the colophon at the end of vol.1 tells us:

The text of this first volume of the Decameron has been prepared from that of the first English translation, printed by Isaac Jaggard for Mathew Lownes in 1625, and compared with the first edition of 1620. The wood engravings have been recut by R. J. Beedham and E. Joyce Francis from those in the edition printed by the brothers Gregorii at Venice in 1492.

But we have to turn to “A Note on the Illustrations” at the end of vol.2 (p.267–8) to find out just who re–cut which wood engravings:

The illustrations which add both beauty and interest to the foregoing pages have been copied in facsimile with a very slight reduction from the woodcuts in the edition of the Decameron printed at Venice by the brothers Gregorii in 1492. They have been re–engraved on wood for the present edition – most of them by Mr R.J. Beedham but the engraving of those for the Second and Eighth Days is the work of Miss Joyce Francis.

Vol.1 covers the first five days of The Decameron, and vol.2 the last five, so, in effect, Joyce did one day in each volume, or about a fifth of the engravings. She did eleven engravings for the Second Day, three of which are shown here as Figs.13a, 13b & 13c. She also did eleven engravings for the Eighth Day, three of which are shown here as Figs.14a, 14b & 14c.

An image of vol.1, open at the title–page spread, was used to head the Printing section of British Art in Industry – 1935 (p.82), a souvenir booklet of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy that year. The exhibition, which took two years to set up, was supported not only by the Royal Academy, but also by the Royal Society of Arts. The front cover of the catalogue is shown in Fig.15a and an image of p.82 in Fig.15b.

How Joyce came to be involved in the publication of The Decameron is, alas, unknown at present. It may have been that she had contacts at the Shakespeare Head Press in Oxford, but it would seem more likely that her involvement came via her ‘senior’ co–worker on the project, R. J. Beedham. (7a)

Ralph John Beedham (1879–1975) was a master of the woodcut, his book Wood Engraving, with an Introduction and an Appendix by Eric Gill, having first been published by St. Dominic’s Press, Ditchling, Sussex, in 1921. In fact Beedham wrote the book at Gill’s suggestion (7b), though neither the Introduction nor the Appendix gives any details as to how this came about. Subsequently the book’s publication was taken over by Faber and Faber, though it was still printed at Ditchling, a fifth edition of it appearing in 1938.

Gill was instrumental in founding the Catholic Crafts Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling in 1920, St Dominic’s Press being its publishing arm. Though Beedham was certainly associated with Ditchling, it is not clear how much time he actually spent there. He was born and spent most of his life in London (7c), and indeed earned his living there, teaching at the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts. He had some connection with Ditchling as early as 1917 (7d) and may have spent some time at Ditchling in the early 1920s (7e), but this may well have been in School vacation times, and some of his work there may have been done by commuting from London. (Gill is known to have commuted from Ditchling to London as business dictated.) At any rate, Beedham’s role at Ditchling was not prominent enough for him to feature in Fiona MacCarthy’s detailed biography Eric Gill (1989), though he clearly impressed Gill enough to contribute to and publish his book.

As the book is a practical guide to the techniques of wood engraving, and as it was clearly popular enough to have run to a fifth edition by 1938, it appears highly likely that Joyce owned a copy. Since Beedham was 25 years older than Joyce, and since his teaching career was at the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts, rather than in Birmingham (where, as we saw earlier, Joyce studied Woodcuts in the academic year 1926–7), it would appear she was never a student of his, and so they must have come together via a different route. One possibility, of course, is that she simply wrote to the author of a book which she had found very useful, and he, impressed by her talent and enthusiasm, invited her to help him out with the large number of woodcuts required for the Boccaccio volumes. Another possibility is that she got to know Beedham via Leonard Jay, who, before taking up his post at Birmingham, had taught, like Beedham, at the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts.

[Beedham did have some connections with publishing in Wales (7f), but since these occurred well before Joyce and her husband took to living in Aberdovey, it is highly unlikely that they have any bearing on the Boccaccio.]

The one book (so far as I know!) which was illustrated by Joyce and which dates from well after the 1930s, was S. Malcolm Kirk’s Operation Panpipes published by Peter Nevill Ltd of London and New York in 1949. For it Joyce did a coloured frontispiece (Fig.16a) and ten black and white illustrations, five of which are shown here (Figs.16b–16f.) It is a children’s story set in post–war Britain (rationing is still in force!) and centres on three children, David, Jim and Margaret, who spend their annual holidays at Carrig on the West Coast of Scotland. Unfortunately their freedom to roam is severely restricted when the War Department decides to set up a Military Training Camp there, with artillery ranges and tank manoeuvres. One day, when the children are out playing, they meet the ancient god Pan (Fig.16a), who had fled from Greece to Scotland to escape the war, getting there by riding on the back of the winged horse, Pegasus. When he learns of the Military Training Camp he and the children hatch a plot (code name: Operation Panpipes) to drive the army out and restore the peace. The plot involves Pan enlisting the aid of the forces of Nature. Thus the Naiads (Nymphs of rivers, springs and ponds) flood the camp; the Nereids (Sea Nymphs) disrupt a naval landing exercise and the Hamadryads (Wood Nymphs) entangle the tanks in foliage. When the tanks are cut free and set out on a training exercise, the ground gives way under them because the Gnomes have hollowed out the earth below. At one point in the plot, the children get to ride Pegasus (Fig.16b) and at another, the Brigadier of the Camp gets assaulted in the rear by a Unicorn ridden by Pan (Fig.16c). During a peaceful interlude, the children and the animals of the wood are treated to a performance by Pan on his Pipes (Fig.16d), then it is back to business with the Loch Ness Monster deluging the soldiers with water (Fig.16e). Operation Panpipes works – the Army abandons the Carrig base – and peace is restored. There is a general celebration, this being shown in Fig.16f, probably the most interesting illustration in the book: Pan plays the bagpipes for a change, watched by (in the foreground) the wood nymphs (left), water nymphs (centre) and gnomes (right). The three children are in the audience, of course, along with various woodland creatures, and Mr and Mrs Pegasus are in the background, with their two foals, Black Spot and White Spot. Even the Unicorn is there, though by now the Loch Ness Monster has gone home. Note the EJF monogram in Figs.16a, 16b & 16e. We shall meet it again in the next section.

Why and how Joyce came to illustrate this book twelve years on from her last illustrated work, is not known, and little information is available about the author, Stanley Malcolm Kirk. He was born in Aston, Birmingham, in 1905. In the 1939 register he is listed as “partner in repetition engineer[ing firm?]” in Birmingham, which may explain why he seems to have written nothing else apart from this children’s story: this may well have been a one–off, done more or less as a hobby (8). In 1946 he married Annabella Sheila Cameron in Solihul (ie Birmingham again.) By 1965, though, they were living in Purley (London) and they were still there when Annabella died in 1979. S.M. Kirk himself died in nearby Croydon in 1990 (or at least his death was registered there.) Barbara Chisholm, who first alerted me to the existence of this wonderful little book, thinks that perhaps Joyce got to know the author through her older sister, Margery (Barbara’s mother.) Given the Birmingham connections just mentioned, this is quite possible.

Unpublished Art Work

Though Joyce gets no mention in most of the standard dictionaries of book illustrators and wood–engravers, she does get a brief mention of her paintings in J. Johnson and A. Greutzner’s book The Dictionary of British Artists 1880–1940 (1986). The entry tells us simply that she exhibited between 1928 and 1937; that she lived in Birmingham during this period; and that she exhibited 26 paintings at the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham, and 5 paintings at the Royal Scottish Academy, no details of which are given. Fortunately, we can expand on that.

In 1928 at the Galleries of the Royal Academy in London there was held the 14th exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society. It featured a wide range of crafts from ceramics through jewellery to furniture and prints. One of the prints, no.52 in the catalogue (p.32), was by Joyce. It was a colour print titled “Monkey”, though unfortunately no image of it seems to have survived. The front cover of the catalogue is shown in Fig.17a and the page relating to Joyce in Fig.17b. (The latter gives an interesting snapshot of the variety of material on display.) Joyce also featured in the 15th such exhibition in 1931, where an example of her book–binding was on display: a copy of Songs to Our Lady of Silence, bound in blue morocco with gold tooling (p.70 in the catalogue.) This book of devotional poems, by Mary Elise Woellworth, though she is not named in it as the author, was first published by Eric Gill’s St. Dominic’s Press, Ditchling, in 1920, with a second edition appearing in 1921. It contained five wood–engravings by Desmond Macready Chute (though he is not named in the book either.) St. Dominic’s Press was mentioned earlier in connection with R.J. Beedham, though whether this has any relevance to Joyce’s choice of a book on which to demonstrate her book–binding skills is not known.

As regards Joyce’s paintings, Jane Dew writes:

She exhibited widely and regularly submitted pieces for the Merionedd Artists. I know her work sold well and l clearly remember sitting in the back of the van, holding a single painting, often half a dozen, for delivery to a gallery or a purchaser. Her subjects were landscapes, l have one from the Cotswolds (“The White Road between Windrush and Burford” – Fig.18), given to me as a birthday present in 1962, and one from the Derbyshire Dales (“Via Gallia, Cromford” – Fig.19). She also painted floral subjects, frequently cyclamen, tulips, roses and lilac often with patterned pottery, often the one you were drinking from!

Neither of these pictures is signed or dated, but Joyce’s name and address are given on the back. The inscription on the back of the Cotswolds picture tells us that it was painted in her days at Loughborough, so in the early 1940s; that on the back of the Derbyshire Dales picture, that it was painted somewhat later, when she was living at Wyecliffe Road in Birmingham.

Jane also owns two woodcuts by Joyce, one of her garden at Loughborough (Fig.20) and the other of two penguins (Fig.21.) Note the monogrammed initials EJF in the lower left corner of the latter, as already noted in some of the illustrations for Operation Panpipes.

As regards Joyce exhibiting her paintings, Jane still has the catalogue of a County Art Exhibition held in Barmouth in the late summer of 1965. Its title page is shown in Fig.22a and the page listing Joyce’s contributions in Fig.22b.

Another of Joyce’s paintings is owned by John & Sue Perfect and is shown in Fig.23a. Signed on the front, its title, “Erw Pystill” (a farm near Cae Newydd), and a date of 1950, are given on the back (Fig.23b.) The back of the painting is interesting, for it tells us that it was at one point offered for sale at 15 guineas, presumably through a gallery, but that it was then withdrawn from sale for some unknown reason. Note that the back of the painting bears both her Birmingham address (35 Wyecliffe Rd, mentioned above) and the address of Cae Newydd. Interestingly a phone number is given for both addresses, odd in the case of the latter, which was at that time singularly devoid of most modern luxuries!

Another painting, signed and dated 1967, but untitled, is shown in Fig.24. This is owned by Christopher Riggio, of London, who bought it in “a posh junk shop on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich” in 2018, as it reminded him of the paintings done by a friend of his, Gareth Cadwallader.

The next painting (Fig.25) was sold by Monopteros Fine Art some time ago, the gallery listing it as “Welsh Border Landscape” by E. Joyce Francis. But there is a mystery surrounding this picture, for it is unsigned and undated, and there is nothing on the back of the painting to link it to Joyce. On the contrary, on the back of the painting, in pencil, is written: “ St.Georges Comp / Marion C Robison / Farm in the North Riding / 1471.” If anything, then, this suggests that the painting is by Marion C. Robison and depicts a farm in the North Riding. So what is going on here ?

The present owner of the picture is Jeremy Fisher, the son of the gallery owner, and he was able to tell me that the picture had come to the gallery attributed to Joyce and with the title, “Craig with a Smithy” (Elan Valley, Mid–Wales.) Luckily, Sue Perfect was able to throw some light on all this, for Marion C. Robison was a Birmingham–based artist who lived in the same area of the city the whole time that Joyce was there. Sue and her husband (like Jane Dew), are convinced that this painting is indeed by Joyce, and believe that Joyce painted it on a canvas given to her by Marion C. Robison, whom she very probably knew in Birmingham. The Smithy is almost certainly one of two such in the Aberdovey area.

An example of Joyce’s flower paintings, signed and dated 1959, is shown in Fig.26. Titled simply “Vase of Flowers,” the painting was sold by Arcadja Auctions in 2009, and its present whereabouts are not known. Jane Dew believes that this painting’s original title, of which she has a record from when it was previously sold in 1990, was “Gladioli, Carnations and Scabious, in a Vase.”

Our next painting is a still–life by Joyce (Fig.27) now in the possession of artist Tony Sawbridge. He and Joyce were great friends in her Birmingham days. Moving in the same artistic circles – both frequently exhibited at the Royal Birmingham Society of Art – they agreed to swap paintings with each other, which is how this painting came into Tony’s possession. He told me that they rather lost contact with each other when Joyce retired from the Education Department at Birmingham University, and moved to Wales, though he did pay several visits to her Arts & Crafts Café in Aberdovey.

Finally we have two paintings owned by Barbara Chisholm. The first is another landscape (Fig.28), probably in the Cae Newydd area, and painted in about 1965. Joyce gave this picture to Barbara for her eighteenth birthday. The second – altogether different from anything seen so far – is a painting (“Dreams”) of a couple in an armchair (Fig.29). It is signed and dated 1960 in the bottom left hand corner. The young woman is thought to be Joyce’s daughter, Marianne, but it is not clear who the young man was.

It only remains for us to look at some of Joyce’s “lesser works”, a delightful series of Christmas cards which she produced year on year for her friends. Four are shown here as Figs.30a (1962), 30b (1963), 30c (1968) and 30d (1970). Unfortunately, three of these are intended to be displayed folded over, like a tent, so it is difficult to show them effectively here, but the detail in all is clear enough even when flattened out. Cae Newydd and Wycliffe Road put in an appearance, along with Joyce’s famous vans and her pet cats. The double bass, incidentally, is John Goodborn’s (Joyce’s son), shown in Fig.30b in his Land Rover.

Finally, the rather neat little picture shown in Fig.31 was done by Joyce when she and Marianne left Birmingham for Aberdovey for good. It was a farewell from herself, Marianne and their cats to Jane’s parents. What I particularly like about it is Joyce’s skilful caricature of herself – seen also in Fig.30c – both making me smile when I think of Fig.2a & 2b and John Perfect’s description of her as a Margaret Rutherford–ish “woman of ample proportions.”

Notes

Note 1: Jos Coumans, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: an Updated Bibliography (2010), #76.

Note 2: The Registers of the Birmingham School of Arts & Crafts are now housed in the Arts, Design & Media Archives at Birmingham City University (formerly Birmingham Polytechnic), and my thanks are due to Fiona Waterhouse, Research Assistant there, for giving me a guided tour of them. The Registers, which, oddly enough, mostly spell her name as Elinor, give her address at the time of her attendance. That she was still living with her family throughout is confirmed by the Electoral Registers of 1930 and 1935.

Note 3a: A useful biography of him can be found in Lawrence William Wallis, Leonard Jay: Master Printer–Craftsman, first Head of the Birmingham School of Printing 1925–1953: an Appraisal (London, 1963). Jay’s papers are housed in the Leonard Jay Collection at the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, and there is an online catalogue of them, as well as a typed paper version by Christine L. Penney, Catalogue of the Leonard Jay Collection (University of Birmingham Library, 1988.) The collection had been assembled by a good friend of Jay’s, Arnold Yates, with the assistance of Jay himself, and it was bought by the University of Birmingham Library in 1987, with the aid of a grant from the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Note 3b: A list of the earlier publications can be found in Bibliography – City of Birmingham School of Printing, which is a Catalogue of Books produced between 1926 and 1935, with an introduction by Leonard Jay (undated, but presumably published in 1935/36.) It lists 82 works. A full listing of the 192 publications produced between 1926 and 1953 can be found in L.W. Wallis’s book, cited in note (3a) above. There are copies of all 192 in Birmingham University Library.

Note 3c: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia: Translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald (1928), not decorated / illustrated, (Coumans #94.) The text is from FitzGerald’s first edition.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald (1931), illustrated by Charles Meacham (Coumans #81.) It is “Dedicated to Ambrose George Potter the English Omarian Enthusiast.” The text is again from FitzGerald’s first edition.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald (1937), decorated by Catherine Gebhard (Coumans #71.) This too is “Dedicated to Ambrose George Potter the English Omarian Enthusiast” and the text is again from FitzGerald’s first edition.

Note 4a: A fascinating and detailed account can be found in Benjamin Walker’s booklet The Resting Places of the Buried Remains of John Baskerville, the Thrice–buried Printer (Birmingham School of Printing, 1944). I have omitted here the somewhat gruesome details of the exhibition of Baskerville’s remains between their removal from his grave in 1821 and their subsequent (clandestine!) interment in Christ Church in 1829.

Note 4b: The story of the petition was covered on the front pages of The Birmingham Post on 8th March 1963 and 2nd April 1963, but was also of sufficient national interest to be reported in The Times on the 9th March 1963 (p.6, col.1) and 13th March 1963 (p.5, col.1).

Note 4c: There is a copy of it in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and it is this which is pictured in Walker, as note 4a, facing p.8.

Note 5: Actually, this was the First Series. A Second Series was started, and presumably it too was intended to consist of twelve booklets, but it seems that only two were actually published: no.1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Selection: Sonnets from the Portuguese (1935) and no.2. William Bennett, Doctor Samuel Johnson and the Ladies of the Lichfield Amicable Society 1775 (1935). The latter had originally been published in the previous year by the Birmingham School of Printing as part of their series titled Johnsoniana: Dr. Samuel Johnson & his friends, along with Bennett’s booklet on Richard Greene mentioned above. Why the second series ‘fizzled out’ in 1935 is not clear, but it may have had something to do with the death of Frank Edwin Baylis in that year.

Note 6: See The Times, 28th July 1934, p.4 col.6. The novel being centred on Glastonbury, the case attracted some attention by the local press. A lengthy account can be found on the front page of The Wells Journal, 3rd August 1934, for example.

Note 7a: Albert Garrett, A History of British Wood Engraving (1978), pp.146, 155–8, 232 & 374; James Hamilton, Wood Engraving and the Woodcut in Britain c.1890–1990 (1994), pp.15 & 121–2; Malcolm Yorke, Eric Gill – Man of Flesh and Spirit (2000 ed), pp.167 & 169.

Note 7b: This is stated on the front inside flap of the dust–jacket of the 1938 edition.

Note 7c: Online quarterly birth records & census returns for 1881, 1891, 1901 & 1911 place him in London, as do electoral registers for 1925, 1935, 1936, 1937 & 1939. The 1921 census return is not yet online, unfortunately.

Note 7d: Beedham engraved two of the illustrations (the rest were done by Gill) in God and the Dragon: a Book of Rhymes, by H.D.C.P (Douglas Pepler), self–published at Ditchling in 1917. (St Dominic’s Press was set up in 1921, but Pepler apparently had his own hand–press.)

Note 7e: This information comes from Joe Cribb, whose father, Joseph, worked with Gill from 1906 until the artist’s death in 1940: “In my father’s memoir of the Guild he says that Beedham worked at the Crank (Gill’s home on Ditchling Common) in the early 1920s. But nothing else. It is unclear whether he was an occasional visitor or local resident at the time.” (Personal email.)

Note 7f: Beedham engraved the frontispiece for Letters of a Portuguese Nun, published by Francis Walterson of Talybont Dyffryn, North Wales in 1929. The frontispiece was designed by Joanna Gill, the youngest daughter of Eric Gill.

He also engraved illustrations for two publications of the Gregynog Press, Eros and Psyche (1935) and The History of St Louis (1937). As indicated in note 7c above, Beedham was actually living in London in both 1935 and 1937.

Note 8: It would appear that S. Malcolm Kirk was the joint translator, with G. Prerauer, from French to English, of D.E. Inghelbrecht’s book The Conductor’s World, published, like Operation Panpipes, by Peter Nevill, in 1953. So far as I am aware, this is the only other published work in which Kirk was involved.

Acknowledgements

In addition to thanking the people named in the body of the above article, I must first and foremost thank Sandra Mason and Bill Martin for handling the initial correspondence with the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Birmingham City University Library and the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Campus. It was they, too, who made the initial contacts with Sylvia Goodborn, John & Sue Perfect, and Jane Dew, and they too who did the initial spadework with the Aberdovey / Aberdyfi Art Society. I must also thank the many staff members of the three Birmingham libraries just mentioned, as well as those at the British Library.

#Rubaiyat of Omar Kyham #E Joyce

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Detailed guide: Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA): An overview of the SEA process has been published on Energy Solutions News

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Detailed guide: Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA): An overview of the SEA process

Overview

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is the process of appraisal through which environmental protection and sustainable development may be considered, and factored into national and local decisions regarding Government (and other) plans and programmes – such as oil and gas licensing rounds and other offshore energy developments, including renewables and gas and carbon dioxide storage.

The SEA process and legislative context

The SEA process aims to help inform ministerial decisions through consideration of the environmental implications of the outcome of a proposed plan/programme. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) formerly DTI, BERR and DECC (the department), as the principal environmental regulator of the offshore oil and gas industry, has taken a proactive stance on the use of SEA as a means of striking a balance between promoting economic development of the UK’s offshore energy resources and effective environmental protection. Although the European Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC) was not incorporated into UK law until 2004 (The Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004, and equivalent Regulations of the devolved administrations), SEAs have been carried out since 1999 in accordance with its requirements.

The SEA Directive sets out the information to be included in the environmental report of the Strategic Environmental Assessment, namely:

An outline of the contents, main objectives of the plan or programme and relationship with other relevant plans and programmes.

The relevant aspects of the current state of the environment and the likely evolution thereof without implementation of the plan or programme.

The environmental characteristics of areas likely to be significantly affected.

Any existing environmental problems which are relevant to the plan or programme including, in particular, those relating to any areas of a particular environmental importance, such as areas designated pursuant to Directives 2009/147/EC and 92/43/EEC (the Birds and Habitats Directives).

The environmental protection objectives, established at international, Community or member state level, which are relevant to the plan or programme and the way those objectives and any environmental considerations have been taken into account during its preparation.

The likely significant effects on the environment, including issues such as biodiversity, population, human health, fauna, flora, soil, water, air, climatic factors, material assets, cultural heritage including architectural and archaeological heritage, landscape and the inter-relationship between the above factors.

The measures envisaged to prevent, reduce and, as fully as possible, offset any significant adverse effects on the environment of implementing the plan or programme.

An outline of the reasons for selecting the alternatives dealt with and a description of how the assessment was undertaken, including any difficulties (such as technical deficiencies or lack of know-how) encountered in compiling the required information.

A description of the measures envisaged concerning monitoring.

A non-technical summary of the information provided under the above headings.

These effects should include secondary, cumulative, synergistic, short, medium and long term, permanent and temporary, positive and negative effects.

The department undertook a sequence of oil and gas SEAs considering various areas of the UKCS (SEA areas 1-8), in addition to an SEA for Round 2 wind leasing. The more recent offshore energy SEAs (OESEA, OESEA2 and OESEA3) incorporated the entire UKCS (with the exception of Northern Ireland and Scottish territorial waters for renewable energy, and Scottish territorial waters for carbon dioxide transport and storage), for technologies including oil and gas exploration and production, gas storage and offloading including carbon dioxide transport and storage, and renewable energy (including wind, wave and tidal power). A summary of the areas covered by previous DECC SEAs, when they were undertaken and for which sectors, and an overview of each of the technologies covered by the latest DECC offshore energy plan/programme is provided in the documents below.

SEA Area Sectors covered Licensing/leasing round SEA 1 The deep water area along the UK and Faroese boundary Oil & Gas 19th Round (2001) SEA 2 The central spine of the North Sea which contains the majority of existing UK oil and gas fields Oil & Gas 20th Round (2002) SEA 2 extension Outer Moray Firth Oil & Gas 20th Round (2002) SEA 3 The remaining parts of the southern North Sea Oil & Gas 21st Round (2003) R2 Three strategic regions off the coasts of England and Wales in relation to a second round of offshore wind leasing Offshore wind Round 2 (2003) SEA 4 The offshore areas to the north and west of Shetland and Orkney Oil & Gas 22nd Round (2004) SEA 5 Parts of the northern and central North Sea to the east of the Scottish mainland, Orkney and Shetland Oil & Gas 23rd Round (2005) SEA 6 Parts of the Irish Sea Oil & Gas 24th Round (2006) SEA 7 The offshore areas to the west of Scotland Oil & Gas 25th Round (2008) OESEA UK offshore waters and territorial waters of England and Wales Oil & Gas, Offshore wind 26th Round/Round 3 (2009) OESEA2 UK offshore waters and territorial waters of England and Wales Oil & Gas, Offshore wind, wave and tidal, gas and carbon dioxide storage 27th Round (2011) 28th Round (2014) OESEA3 UK offshore waters and territorial waters of England and Wales Oil & Gas, Offshore wind, wave and tidal, gas and carbon dioxide storage 29th Round (2016) Supplementary Round (2016) 30th Round (2017) 31st Round (2018)

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As these SEAs have been carried out, the process has evolved and been improved. The evolution and refinement of the process will continue. A required part of SEA is consultation with the public, environmental authorities and other bodies, together with such neighbouring states as may be potentially affected.

In conducting the SEA process, the Department is guided by the SEA Steering Group, composed of departmental representatives, conservation and other agencies, NGOs, industry representatives and independent experts. The diverse members’ role is to act as technical peers, guiding the selection of SEA methods and identifying the right information sources.

Completed studies relating to earlier SEAs are located on the British Geological Survey (BGS) SEA archive.

SEA Recommendations

A series of recommendations have been made in the previous offshore energy SEA Environmental Reports on SEA processes and conclusions, the natural and wider environment, and regulatory and other controls. A compilation of these recommendations and their current status (whether closed, in progress or still open) is available for download below.

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Offshore Energy SEA: the current SEA

The Department conducted a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of a draft plan/programme to enable future renewable leasing for offshore wind, wave and tidal devices and licensing/leasing for seaward oil and gas rounds, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide gas storage – the plan/programme was adopted in July 2016. The renewable energy elements of the plan/programme cover parts of the UK Exclusive Economic Zone and the territorial waters of England and Wales (the Scottish Renewable Energy Zone and Scottish and Northern Irish waters within the 12 nautical mile territorial sea limit are not included in this part); for hydrocarbon gas and carbon dioxide storage it applies to the UK Exclusive Economic Zone and the territorial waters of England and Wales (with the exception of the territorial waters of Scotland for carbon dioxide storage); and for hydrocarbon exploration and production it applies to all UK waters.

The Environmental Report for OESEA3 has an indicative time horizon (i.e. period of currency) of 5 years. During this period, as with previous SEAs, the Department intends to maintain an active SEA research programme; identifying information gaps (some of which were outlined in the last set of SEA Recommendations), commissioning new research where appropriate, and promoting its wider dissemination through a series of research seminars and publications. This will also involve continued engagement with the SEA Steering Group and review of the information base for the SEA, including the environmental baseline, other relevant plans and programmes, and policy and regulation.

A review of the OESEA3 Environmental Report was undertaken in 2018 in the light of a range of new information covering leasing and licensing; new initiatives and the continued relevance of the plan/programme; the environmental baseline and the understanding of potential effects associated with the plan/programme. The SEA conclusions and recommendations were also reviewed in the context of this updated information, and it has been determined that these remain current and can continue to inform and support future leasing/licensing. The SEA Steering Group reviewed a draft of the report and the review document is available for download below.

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Offshore Energy SEA: research programme

The department has maintained an active SEA research programme; identifying information gaps (some of which are outlined in previous SEA Recommendations) and commissioning new research where appropriate. This has been part of the department’s offshore SEA programme since 1999.

A summary of recent research and its status is provided in the document below, and final reports (where published) are available for download. Completed studies relating to earlier SEAs are located on the British Geological Survey (BGS) SEA archive or the research page for OESEA2.

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The authors and researchers involved in SEA studies have been encouraged to submit papers for peer reviewed publication. A list of recent publications is given below.

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Appropriate Assessment

Following announcement of a Seaward Licensing Round or following receipt of applications for licences made under each Seaward Licensing Round, a screening assessment is undertaken by the department to determine whether the award of any of the Blocks offered or applied for would be likely to have a significant effect on a relevant European conservation site, either individually or in combination with other plans or projects. Those sites and related Blocks for which a potential for likely significant effect is identified at the screening stage are subject to further assessment (Appropriate Assessment, (AA)) prior to the Oil & Gas Authority (OGA) making a decision on whether to grant licences. These assessments are undertaken to comply with obligations under the Offshore Petroleum Activities (Conservation of Habitats) Regulations 2001 (as amended).

The 31st Seaward Licensing Round closed for applications on 7th November 2018. Applications were received covering 164 whole or part Blocks and of those, 41 Blocks were identified as requiring further assessment (AA). The assessments covering these Blocks have been documented in four regional reports covering areas of the Mid North Sea High, Moray Firth, Irish Sea and English Channel, and were subject to public consultation.

The reports were revised as appropriate in light of comments received during the public consultation which ended on the 21st March 2019.

The reports listed below document the further assessment undertaken in relation to Blocks subject to AA in the previous eight Seaward Licensing Rounds.

25th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

26th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

27th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

28th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

29th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

2016 Supplementary Licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

30th seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

31st seaward oil and gas licensing Round Appropriate Assessment

How do you get involved?

Consultation

The OESEA consultation process has been designed to be in keeping with the Cabinet Office guidance on Consultation Principles for engaging stakeholders when developing policy and legislation. The guidance does not have any statutory basis and therefore where there are mandatory consultation requirements set out in legislation, or other requirements which may affect a consultation such as confidentiality, these must be adhered to.

The main elements of public and stakeholder consultation and input to the offshore energy SEA process are:

Publication through the Department’s offshore SEA webpages

Scoping

Stakeholder meetings and expert assessment workshops

A suitable public consultation period following publication of the Environmental Report

Post consultation report

Scoping

The objective of scoping is to identify the main issues of concern at an early stage so that they can be considered in appropriate detail in the SEA. Scoping also aids in the identification of information sources and data gaps that may need to be filled by studies or surveys to underpin the assessment. The SEA process includes a formal scoping step, the principal purposes of which are to:

Promote stakeholder awareness of the SEA initiative

Ensure access to all relevant environmental information

Identify opportunities for potential collaboration and the avoidance of duplication of effort

Identify information gaps so these could be evaluated and filled if necessary

Identify stakeholder issues and concerns which should be considered in the SEA

Stakeholder and other workshops

A number of workshops have been undertaken prior to each SEA. These have included expert assessment workshops, which bring together the expertise of the SEA Steering Group, the authors of underpinning technical reports, other users of the offshore area and the SEA team to bear on the assessment process for the particular SEA. Additionally, stakeholder workshops are held involving a wide variety of potential stakeholders, drawn from other government departments, local authorities, other industry bodies, academics and NGOs. The objectives of SEA stakeholder workshops are to provide stakeholders with updates on:

UK offshore energy supply context

The outcome of scoping

How issues raised in scoping are being addressed in the SEA process and consultation document

The outcomes of the assessment workshop

Initial conclusions of the overall assessment

Stakeholder input and a summary of issues raised in the meeting is used to inform the SEA process, and is document and included in an appendix to the environmental report.

Formal consultation

The environmental report is published for formal public consultation. The publication of the environmental report is advertised in the popular press and specialist journals. Copies of the report are made available free of charge either as paper or electronic versions, and more recently are posted to relevant coastal libraries where they may be consulted. Comments are invited by post or email.

Post consultation report

Following closure of the consultation period, the comments are given due consideration and a post consultation report is then produced. The post consultation report is published on the offshore SEA consultation webpage and made available as a download. Along with the post consultation report, a compilation of the consultation comments are published verbatim (according to the authors’ wishes).

Adoption statement

Following publication of the post consultation report, a ministerial statement is made to confirm the outcome of the SEA process (e.g. on adoption of the plan/programme, to proceed with further oil and gas licensing).

Contacts

Please direct queries to the Environmental Policy Unit:

[email protected] 01224 254015

#BEIS

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