A House Through Time BBC2

[Serial_Apologist]

If anyone’s interested it’s currently on sale for £600,000...

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-...-52078398.html

Fancy! A similar London property in, say, Islington, would probably be on the market for twice that amount.

One learned from the programme that the house was built in 1840, so, strictly speaking, it is early Victorian, not Georgian, as described in the estate agent blurb.

[jean]

One learned from the programme that the house was built in 1840, so, strictly speaking, it is early Victorian, not Georgian, as described in the estate agent blurb.

Yes, the presenter told us that.

In that part of the city that style persisted, in keeping with the other houses in the area. There are some houses, possibly in Falkner Street itself, where you can see the transition - splay bay windows alongside 'Georgian' - looking doorcases.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, the presenter told us that.

In that part of the city that style persisted, in keeping with the other houses in the area. There are some houses, possibly in Falkner Street itself, where you can see the transition - splay bay windows alongside 'Georgian' - looking doorcases.

Yes indeed, jean. Having myself drawn up quite a dossier of examples of this kind in London, and having previously known Bristol very well, what is interesting in that the changes in architectural styles from era to era shared many features in common, regardless of region or even building materials. Sometimes one has considerable overlap of features from era to era, as in this and a number of instances in London; sometimes - as in other arts - the transitions can be quite sudden: for instance, the change from Italianate to Dutch Renaissance stylings that took place in the 1870s.

I think you will enjoy the fourth episode of the programme, jean - you might even know some of the people featured personally. I found the episode from The Secret History of our Streets dealing with Portland Street in London's W8 powerfully evocative of my own childhood, having had a school friend who lived just around the corner from that location. Sharp distinctions of class within very short distances were very much part of the picture in the 1950s, as I'm sure they would have been with you, with upper middle class spaciousness cheek-by-jowl with cramped and crumbling conditions; bomb sites were our playgrounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyUhMIEZh0I

Watching that again just now, it is interesting to see that the one original descendant from the mercantile bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages portrayed living in the district - the guy selling up and moving to a basic hermit's life in a woodland which just happens to be a family heirloom, is the first to have come to "see through" the emptiness of the City life in banking he is leaving behind, whose very workings have brought about the gentrification and pricing out of the area: obviously he can afford to, but he's not swapping one luxury lifestyle for another in, say, Monaco. Interesting to compare his position with the working class ex-locals effectively forced out by Rachmanism before the changing of the area's character into one that had attracted him and his ilk.

[Cockney Sparrow]

It was the Secret History of our Streets - and unfortunately you missed the 2016 re-broadcasts on BBC4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bzppg/episodes/guide
.....And looking at the programme website, I see there were three episodes in a further series set in Scotland. As we have Scottish forbears (Mrs CS much more than I) that series would have been of interest but I missed it (2014, BBC2).

Perhaps they will re-run some of these yet again - or they might join the "archive" material on the iPlayer at some point.
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I see the first of the three Scottish programmes is being re-broadcast tomorrow evening on BBC4.....

[Ferretfancy]

I see the first of the three Scottish programmes is being re-broadcast tomorrow evening on BBC4.....

Natural History programmes aside, it seems to me that BBC Scotland is now the only producer of consistently good and non gimmicky documentaries.Perhaps it has retained something of the programme development structure that was common to the BBC of old, in house. Nowadays too many programmes are given the go ahead for outside production companies which are not scrutinised properly for potential quality.

[Once Was 4]

Has anybody been following the 'Murder, Mystery and My Family' series on BBC1 at 09.15? This to me shows the danger of such series.
1. A woman in the 1930s was hung for poisoning her husband. An old man and a very old man (her son and grandson) hope that it will be proved that there was a miscarriage of justice. The experts look at the evidence: the police investigation appears to have been thorough with no lack of integrity. The forensic evidence is put to modern tests which prove that it was even stronger than thought at the time. But it comes out that a prosecution witness was originally interviewed as a suspect and kept changing her story before the police believed her. This was the only weakness - a modern court would have wanted more detail about why they eventually did believe her. Despite this the verdict was decided to be safe - causing distress to these elderly men.
2. Two career criminals were hung for killing a (presumably rich) widow. Their defence was that they were actually committing a robbery in another city at the time. The victim had been ostensibly found by her son; however, police records still existing show that their investigation suggested that the son was almost certainly telling lies and the police also had a letter written by the victim about a month before her death saying that the son was after her money. These were not disclosed to the defence at the time. The lead detective in the case had been proven to have lied in another case and had put pressure on his subordinates to do the same. Additionally the reputation of several witnesses was impugned. So the conviction was deemed unsafe - fair enough - but somebody else (who presumably is not now alive to be able to put up a defence) was more-or-less found guilty and that lead detective and his witnesses were likewise not able to defend themselves. Hmmm! The granddaughter of one of the hung men, not surprisingly, showed quite a lot of distress and anger: was it really in her best interests to show this?
3. The one that I found most disturbing was today's: this is a case well known in West Yorkshire of a farmer-cum-burglar who was hung for the vicious killing of two policemen. Even some now retired local police think that this was a wrongful conviction which was mainly based on the testimony of one of the victims as he lay dying in hospital. Again though, somebody who is now not around to defend himself was found guilty and the reputation of the doctors who were caring for the dying policeman at the time was likewise impugned. Rather surprisingly though, the high court judge who sums up at the end thought that there was no case for re-examining this murder. The daughter of the hanged man (clearly a very intelligent and articulate woman) showed great dignity in believing her father's innocence.
It is pleasing to note that the programmes made it clear that there were four murder victims here who should be remembered.
Thoughts?

[vinteuil]

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... only a pedantic thought. Hang has a different past tense when it comes to capital punishment. "Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner, entered the chamber, hung up his coat and hanged the prisoner."

So in your examples, the people were hanged.

I'll get my coat from where it's hanging...


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[Nick Armstrong]

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... only a pedantic thought. Hang has a different past tense when it comes to capital punishment. "Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner, entered the chamber, hung up his coat and hanged the prisoner."

So in your examples, the people were hanged.

[Serial_Apologist]

.

... only a pedantic thought. Hang has a different past tense when it comes to capital punishment. "Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner, entered the chamber, hung up his coat and hanged the prisoner."

So in your examples, the people were hanged.

I'll get my coat from where it's hanging...


.

Was it well hung?

[Once Was 4]

Was it well hung?

An interesting one today: despite clear police malpractice in 1910 and some ingenious theories as to what may have happened and who actually did it, the barristers did not think that the case was worth persuing.

I just gotten my coat