Sometimes you see a writing like the one I used in the title for this post scratched into wooden things or painted with an Edding on naked stone of some sights of high public interest. Just now I thought of these inscriptions. When I read a post at London Leben – a blog I highly recommend to everyone who likes London and wants to get some insights into things and places of whose existence you would’ve otherwise never known – a few minutes ago I thought: I was (t)here! In Das Dorf, dass fuer England starb Konstantin talks about an aera in Dorset in which big wooden signs indicate if the roads are open or closed for passage. Visiting H. Esquire during my summer vacation a few weeks ago (it is only a few weeks ago, although it now seems that it was much longer ago), we drove to a hill amidst this military exercise aera. On our way to this point where you usually have a nice view over the countryside, we came across a lot of those big signs where locks secured interchangeable smaller tablets, on which was printed either a white CLOSED on red background or a white OPEN on green background for each of the roads going away into the land from the coresponding juction. I neither knew of the history of the military firing area nor how long it existed and why it was accounted for that purpose. Now I know it and it makes me sad somehow. I hope the people of Tyneham finally found their peace with what happened to their land. Tyneham itself is now a museum. When I visited H. Esq. we didn’t get there though, because the road we would have used to get there was closed at that time.
A note by the editor: There are books on Tyneham, the lost heritage. However Amazon has no image in stock for these books, so I featured a German book called London Low Cost (rough translation).
A second note: If you’re around Dorset, just get there (to Tyneham, I mean). Be sure to have a look at Corfe Castle and the like. H. Esq. liked to direct his car into rural roads wondering where they would take him, back in 1975. That way he managed to get to know many nice places. The hill with the nice view over the country is one of them.
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