Horton Chapel

Just about a week ago, we thought it time to take a look at how the Horton Chapel project was getting on, a project which can be found at reference 1. It turning out this afternoon that our last visit, noticed at reference 2, was around six months ago, much longer than I had thought. With the idea being on this occasion to see what the light lunch offering was like.

Greeted on arrival by a very large pot plant in a very small pot. I think I would have fingered it and that I would have remembered if it was a fake. But I also think I had better take another look. 

I have got used to the servery being in what had been the altar of the chapel and I fared rather better in the eating department than BH. Some sort of mixed bean stew with boiled rice: perhaps not something one would want every day, but fine for once in a while. While BH went for a not very satisfactory leek and potato soup, tasting mainly of potato. Probably not helped by the fact that she makes this very soup herself quite often and so has expectations. Accompanied by an interesting sausage meat, mushroom and pastry confection. Are they going head-to-head with the famous offering from Gregg's?

Quite a sprinkling of pensioners and ladies out for lunch and I dare say we will be back.

So while it might have been good to give the chapel over to the local Muslim community, the people who did get it seem to have done a pretty fair job, with a good quality restoration under their belt and plenty going on. We wondered whether another team of locals will do as well with the Wells Community Centre a mile or so to the southeast - in the centre of a much older housing estate, probably starting out as a council estate - with what I imagine to be a much thinner supply of enthusiastic older residents to drive the thing forward. But see reference 3.

Signs of underground activity on return.

While this afternoon I read at references 4 and 5 of Saudi Arabia's new linear city, a perfect rectangle 200m wide and 170km long. A perfect rectangle to be filled with all kinds of high tech toys and which also displaces some fraction of the Howeitat, a tribe made known to the western world in Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. So the conservatism and tribal values of the ruling tribe does not always extend to other tribes. And then, what about Health & Safety? Will the current project do better than the Qataris with their world cup?

[Auda abu Tayi, chief of the Howeitat tribe, offers allegiance to King Faisal in 1917. Library of Congress]

In the event, despite Lawrence's efforts, King Faisal (of the Hejaz) did not make the cut, losing out to the Ibn Saud (of the interior). Maybe horses were no match for camels in the desert?

[The area of [a short segment of] The Line, highlighted in yellow, shows numerous excavators in the area (red dots) moving earth to the areas in purple. Blue dots representing construction vehicles can be seen throughout the base for the construction workers. Arrays of solar panels have been shaded in green. SOAR]

But, in fairness, better to spend lots of oil money on innovative urban living than on more fancy war planes, of which Saudi Arabia probably already has quite a lot, not to say quite enough. I dare say more than we have got.

References

Reference 1: https://thehortonepsom.org/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/horton-hospital.html.

Reference 3: https://epsomwellscommunityassociation.org/.

Reference 4: Smart cities: These exclusive satellite images show that Saudi Arabia’s sci-fi megacity is well underway: Weirdly, any recent work on The Line doesn’t show up on Google Maps. But we got the images anyway - Mark Harris, MIT Technology Review - 2022

Reference 5: https://www.neom.com/en-us/newsroom/the-line-exhibition-riyadh.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howeitat.