Piano 73

Piano 73 was captured in Cucumber Alley in the Seven Dials Market, one entrance to which is more or less opposite the Neal's Yard Dairy shop in Shorts Gardens.

A piano from Monington & Weston, once the property of Middlesex Education Committee. Touched up in pink. In the circumstances - to be reported on more fully in due course - I didn't think to try a few keys and come to a judgement about long it was since it was last tuned.

According to Wikipedia, Monington & Weston were a respectable rather grand manufacturer of pianos, but they did supply Sandringham House. In business from around 1860 to around 1980. The name has now been bought up by a Chinese company.

I have not been able to find out much about the Middlesex Education Committee, other than that it functioned from around 1945-1961 and a 1967 PhD thesis from Bedford College (at reference 4) about secondary education policy - which happens to have used Middlesex as a case study. This thesis is old enough to be in the form of a double-spaced typescript and was written about the time that I left a direct grant school in Cambridge, a curious variety of secondary school of which there were a number in Middlesex at that time. It seems to have reached me from a collection of such held by Proquest, possibly once something to do with the University of  Michigan at Ann Arbor. After 500 or so pages, it reaches the unremarkable conclusion, conveniently reproduced in the abstract at the beginning, that: 'It is concluded that the impetus for change in the secondary schools system does not come from any single group in society, and that changes in administrative practice are closely related to changes in public opinion. Indeed, these two factors reinforce each other'.

For some reason I associate to the fact that for much of the period in question, a large proportion of primary education in England at least was in the grip of the church, mainly that of the Church of England. A grip which has strengthened in recent years in the secondary sector, not least because of the faith-centric efforts of Past Master Blair. Failure to attend church by nearly everybody (apart from Muslims) notwithstanding.

PS: the photo booth to the right was occupied by two young ladies. I did not think to check whether it came from the photo booth operators of Blenheim Road here at Epsom, responsible for most of the booths to be found at railway stations.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/piano-72.html.

Reference 2: https://www.sevendialsmarket.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monington_%26_Weston.

Reference 4: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/78865029.pdf. SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION IN MIDDLESEX SINCE I944 - Renate Saran - date unknown'.

Reference 5: https://www.proquest.com/.

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