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The 'Eternal' Brick & Other Anomalous Urban Objects

Back to playing cards in the street.

when I was about 10 I read that a man had made a full set of cards by picking up cards he found in the street. Ever since then I have noticed cards in the street and I think that I could have made a full deck by now with all the ones I've seen.
 
Thanks, I’ll start seeing cards tomorrow, then!
 
On a bus this afternoon, somewhere in the Camborne-Redruth conurbation, when we were stopped at temporary traffic lights, I glanced right and saw this on the wall of a house.

Jackdaw.jpg


The decoration is interesting in itself; whose face is that? And is something missing from the incomplete circle below? Another face, or what?

The jackdaw just adds another layer of symbolism to the mystery! 8)
 
Does the lower shape represent a horse shoe? There is quite a bit of bird poo on that fella's head to suggest its a regular perch.
 
davidplankton said:
Does the lower shape represent a horse shoe?
Click to expand...
I wondered about that, but it's generally considered unlucky to have a horseshoe upside-down - all the luck would run out!
 
rynner2 said:
davidplankton said:
Does the lower shape represent a horse shoe?
Click to expand...
I wondered about that, but it's generally considered unlucky to have a horseshoe upside-down - all the luck would run out!
Click to expand...
Bracelet?
 
You'll have to check whether the Jackdaw is still there tomorrow... this could run and run.
 
birdy said:
You'll have to check whether the Jackdaw is still there tomorrow... this could run and run.
Click to expand...
I plan to! Plus, there's a new metal sculpture in the area, recently installed but not yet completed, that I want a photo of!
 
It might be St. John the Baptist, he's the patron saint of Penzance & his head can be found on several PZ buildings. I know that it's a little further out to be in Redruth/Camborne, but it might be him? Also the horseshoe, could it be a laurel wreath? Or even a slave bracelet, depending on the age of the building....

Also, I love this thread. Back in my student days myself & a mate used to try and find the oddist things we could on the steet. It became known as "Street finds.com" :roll:
 
I passed the building again today (no jackdaw!) but the bus was going too fast for a better picture.

But I noticed there are three pairs of semi-detached houses with the same pointed arch niche, but only the one has any decoration - the others are bare.


Not very far away in Pool is this:

IronBall.jpg


Obviously the installation is incomplete. I'd like to think it's going to be a fountain, but with all the talk of drought that could be wishful thinking!
 
That's a bit rusty to be a fountain. What's the betting that it rusts away completely after a period of use?
 
It looks like the logo for New World Pictures. Was the constructor a Roger Corman fan?
 
rynner2 said:
davidplankton said:
Does the lower shape represent a horse shoe?
Click to expand...
I wondered about that, but it's generally considered unlucky to have a horseshoe upside-down - all the luck would run out!
Click to expand...

I always understood that, but my brother's partner - from Lincolnshire I think, somehwere on the East Coast anyway - insists that having the horseshoe pointing up allows the Devil to sit in it, and for luck it should point down. I had mine the 'right way up' but after a run of extremely bad luck I got rid of it. Just for the momentary 'safety-valve' of tearing it down and throwing it in the scrap, not because I really believed it had anything to do with what happened.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I'm pretty sure the horseshoe is really a laurel wreath which would have once surrounded the name of the man depicted.

I can't trace anything online. As a wild guess, could it be a mask of Henry Jenner, Cornish language revivalist?

Wikipedia page with Jenner Photo Here :?:
Click to expand...
Hmmm.... I know Hayle, and St Uny, where Jenner is buried, but what's his connection with Pool?

More later...
 
Reclaimed or unused decorative and monumental masonry often gets employed in sites the items in question were not originally intended for. The block with the carved face looks like a keystone and the lower piece could be an unfinished wreath - the rendering they are set in looks relatively new, at least compared to the stonework.

It would be interesting to know if it's a blind arch in which they are set, or one that has been blocked up later. If it's a blind arch then there's more chance that the stonework is original to the building, if it's a window or archway which has been blocked later in the building's life then the stonework is also more likely to be an addition.

I've always found stuff like this fascinating, because even if the masonry has been added randomly, and has no particular significance in relation to the building it's now a part of, you're still left with the story of where it came from and what it was intended for in the first place.
 
Spookdaddy said:
It would be interesting to know if it's a blind arch in which they are set, or one that has been blocked up later. If it's a blind arch then there's more chance that the stonework is original to the building, if it's a window or archway which has been blocked later in the building's life then the stonework is also more likely to be an addition.
Click to expand...
It's almost certainly a blind arch, as it's on the dividing line between two conjoined houses, so there's presumably a dividing wall behind it.

I managed to get off the bus for ten minutes today and take more pics, which I'll post later if I can find the time!
 
rynner2 said:
...I noticed there are three pairs of semi-detached houses with the same pointed arch niche, but only the one has any decoration - the others are bare.
Click to expand...
My on-the-spot visit today (even though I was on the other side of the road) has proved that statement wrong on two counts!

Firstly, there are four niches, not three.

Secondly, the niche I missed earlier also has a similar head and wreath(?) decoration!

These are the houses in question: the pair on the right have the arch I snapped before:

Houses.jpg


However the pair of houses adjacent to these also have an arch with a head and wreath(?) in it, but this was partially concealed before by a poorly placed drainpipe!

face2niche.jpg


(The other, bare, arches, are on two pairs of semi-detached houses on the left of the main photo.)

So now we can compare Face1 with Face2:

Face1
Face1.jpg


Face2
face2detail.jpg


Face2 seems to have a clean shaven chin, and mutton-chop whiskers, which doesn't agree with the photo of the fully bearded Jenner. But we may never know what architectural anomaly caused Face2 to wear a small conical hat on his head!
Next time I'll try to get closer, and maybe question the locals.

I'd guess the houses are 19th century, built when mining was still the foundation of the Cornish economy. I could check on that when I get time, as the Cornish Studies centre
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_Studies_Centre )
is conveniently placed near the bus stop in Redruth on my way home!
 
Fluttermoth said:
Face2 looks much, much newer than Face1; a replacement? Or different weathering?
Click to expand...
Or a different photo, and angle of light, and different photo-processing...?

Next time, I'll try for similarly angled shots of both, from closer in.
 
One of the houses appears to be for sale. You could telephone the estate agent and get a property description. Just a thought. :)
 
If Pool was a tin town and those properties were built by mine owners for their work-force, then I suppose the heads could be some sort of reference to those benefactors.
 
My detective work continues: went to the Cornish Studies Centre, and spoke to the bearded young man at the desk, showing him my pic of old Beaky Muttonchops. Unfortunately the young man is very softly spoken and I'm half deaf, so the communication could have been better, but he did pull up some maps on his computer.

There were no houses in the area in 1840, but there were some by 1880, including (I think) the houses in question, which narrows things down a bit. I'd like to have spent more time with the maps, but I didn't want to take up too much of his time - I can always go back.

As I left CSC for the bus stop, I realised that just two doors away there was a branch of the estate agents selling the house! I spoke to a young lady in there, and showed her old Beaky, but she didn't know who he was either. She knew of the house, which is in Agar Road, but it was put on the market by their Camborne branch, and she gave me their number.

I've just rung them, but the girl who answered didn't know about the faces, but she said she would ask around and get back to me if anyone had some information.

So that's where it stands at present, except that mining may well be involved. The house is within walking distance of the old East Pool Mine, now a Visitor Centre.
East Pool mine (later known as East Pool and Agar mine), was a metalliferous mine in the Camborne and Redruth mining area, just east of the village of Pool in Cornwall, England. Worked from the early 18th century until 1945, first for copper and later tin, it was very profitable for much of its life. Today the site has two preserved beam engines and is part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Pool_mine
Click to expand...
Just to reinforce the mining connection, the building between CSC and the estate agent used to be the Mining Exchange:
http://www.cornwall-calling.co.uk/mines ... change.htm
All three are visible from the bus stop just across the road!

Coincidentally, the estate agent's (under a different name, and over ten years ago) provided me with photocopies of some old maps of Camborne when I was researching a haunted house there! What goes around comes around! 8)
 
You're probably already aware of this, but it seems likely that Agar is a reference to the name of the local landowners - Agar-Robartes.

Looks like this is the particular Agar-Robartes who would have been around at the time - he gets a mention on the Wiki page for East Pool mine (in fact, seems he might have helped save it).

I still wonder if the heads, like the road name itself, are references to the local landowners.
 
Spookdaddy said:
You're probably already aware of this, but it seems likely that Agar is a reference to the name of the local landowners - Agar-Robartes.

Looks like this is the particular Agar-Robartes who would have been around at the time - he gets a mention on the Wiki page for East Pool mine (in fact, seems he might have helped save it).

I still wonder if the heads, like the road name itself, are references to the local landowners.
Click to expand...
You could well be right.

I first got into the history of Cornish mining with my historical research into the 'haunted house' in Camborne, which happened to lie over one of the deepest parts of Dolcoath Mine (which was the deepest in Cornwall). The story of flood waters threatening neighbouring mines was a recurring one, and the density of working mines in the Camborne-Redruth area kept increasing the problem.

Fascinating to me that a haunting over a decade ago should today link up with faces on the front of some houses via the mines of Dolcoath and East Pool, and a Redruth estate agent! I must dig out my earlier notes and re-read them!
 
Hopefully this is the appropriate thread for this oddity, and perhaps there is nothing more to it than someone's outre and ineffective attempt at ditching some old masonry... or perhaps they sent their kid to the nearby tip with it and they decided to abandon it early.

Either way, have somehow ended up going past this almost every day for the last 2 weeks and it weirds me out ever time:

Random1.jpg


Random2.jpg
 
That is a bit weird.
Possible explanation - perhaps someone was transporting some rocks (I dunno, for a small rockery maybe), and the zip gave way. The person then abandoned it there, in the street.
 
BlackRiverFalls : Last year we had a rash of stencil art put up by students along streets not far from that one. Could this be a student 'installation'?

rynner2 : Leeds has the Leodis Photographic Archive (onlineand at the central library) - anything similar for your area? You might be able to get early shots of the houses when the statuary was fresher or more complete.
 
special_farces said:
rynner2 : Leeds has the Leodis Photographic Archive (onlineand at the central library) - anything similar for your area? You might be able to get early shots of the houses when the statuary was fresher or more complete.
Click to expand...
If such stuff exists, I'd expect the Cornish Studies Centre to have it.
I'll no doubt return there at some time.
 
That hadn't occurred to me SF... you might be onto something.

Don't recall the stencil art, although depending on what I have on, I don;t always get up into studentland proper that often, or at least not to go far off of the main drag as it were.
 
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