Rutland Earthquakes

In the last few days we have had two largish, by UK standards, earthquakes in the Oakham area, which have shock peoples houses and rattled peoples never to some extent.

The first of the two earthquakes measured 3.2 occurred on Thursday morning at 6:07 am and woke everyone up in the house, while the second was stronger and measured 3.5 and occurred today at 6:50 am. It was the first one that was more shocking than the second despite the fact it was slightly smaller. Maybe that was due to the fact that it woke us all up with the shacking of the house while the other was sightly later in the morning and was more like thunder with what appeared to be less shaking.

Both earthquakes were in the Ashwell area, rather than Oakham as reported in the press who managed to find some what they called terrified locals to give them interviews for the news paper. All the people I talked to were more matter of fact about it all and just curious to know and understand why they had occurred and if we were going to have a third even bigger quake. Like usual the National newspapers blew the whole thing up and sensationalised the whole thing, and that included the quality press too.

UPDATE 28th April 2014 - The third Earthquake arrived today at 10:05pm centered again in the Ashwell area. Much smaller than the other two at 1.7, didn't really feel anything, it was more sort and large clap of thunder.

UPDATE 25th July 2014 - Hopefully the final earthquake for a while which measure 1.5 occurred at 10:36am, this time located between Langham and Cold Overton. This time it was just more of a rumble rather than anything really noticeable.

Just like Summer

What a super day it has been, it had been just like summer should be with the sun shining down and the temperatures reaching into the mid twenties, and it stayed that way until the showers of the evening. All in all  it has been glorious and what a better way to spend part of it at than at the Rock By Rail Museum near Ashwell in Rutland.

It is a lovely little museum and there is lots to see. The people there work very hard to restore the engines and the rolling stock and you can walk around the workshops and see the work going on. At the moment they are redeveloping the museum but that doesn't make it less interesting and they are hopping to complete the work by September when they will have the some of the trains in steam again.

The museum opening times at the moment are Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday from 11.00am to 4pm and admission is free, although they do ask for voluntary donations of £4 per adult to assist in their work. You can spend a good coupe of hours at the museum, even though it is being redeveloped, and there is a cafe on site so you can have a drink and a bite to eat.

Graffiti - An Old Problem

Graffiti is often thought of as a modern problem, but in fact for people to leave their mark goes back much further in time as these examples show with the oldest nearly four hundred years old. Although these go back nearly four hundred years it not that uncommon to find other examples from the eighteen hundreds in old churches.

These are just a few examples that I found carved onto various tombs and grave covers in St Mary's Church in Ashwell. If you are passing buy the Church pop in and have a look yourself. There is a impressive hallow wooden effigy of a knight in amour that dates back to 1320,  the time of crusades in the Holy land.

Goodbye Ashwell Prison

Today was the last operational day of Ashwell Prison in Rutland. In effect the prison has been closed for a a while now with prison warders  guarding a empty prison but today marks it's official closure after 43 of service as a category C establishment. 

Although a prison is not what anyone really wants on it's door step it has for years provided employment in the area. These jobs and the money they have injected into the local economy has now effectively been lost and will over the coming years, together with the closure of RAF Cottesmore, be sadly missed by local traders. In that respect it is a sad day for Rutland made worse by the final march of the through the town of the RAF and Naval personal based at the RAF base on the same day.

Ashwell Prison to Close

It is a sad day for the people that work Ashwell Prison and their families which is to close for good in March this year. It is also a sad day for Rutland with another major employer disappearing from the county due to Government cuts forced onto this country by the greedy bankers who continue to smile and take their bonuses as all around them falls apart. According to reports the Government have closed the prison because of the cost of refurbishing the prison after the riots of 2009, are just to great in the current economic climate, however people working at the prison claim millions have already been spent of on the prison rebuilding it. It seems that the Government are happy to waste that investment and bulldoze it to the ground to be replaced with who knows what. 

The interesting thing is that it will make the plans by Hawksmead look even more ridiculous than they were to start with. The prison was one of the larger employers in the area and it will see more people leaving the county putting more empty houses on the market. It will also impact the services industries in the area that supported the prison making them less likely to take on more employees. If the Hawksmead development looked silly before, it now just looks plain stupid. Firstly there are now two brown field site in Rutland for potential development, the prison site at Ashwell and the RAF base at Cottesmore. So the question is why on earth develop a green field site at Oakham and spoil a lovely town when there are brown field sites waiting to be reused. Also this closure brings into question the whole scale of the original Hawksmead Development as well as the plans outlined in the Rutland Core Strategy. With growth set to slow over the next few years this isn't the time for unrealistic plans.

The question is will the Oakham town council planning authority take any notice of of the fact that the prison has closed. I believe the answer is no, they will continue to nod at the developers of the Hawksmead Development despite from what I can tell talking to the people I know is a growing concerns that they don't have the people of Rutland and Oakham's interests at heart and they are living cloud cuckoo land. They are railroading this development through despite growing local opposition. There are even rumours going around that Oakham town council are considering holding future planning meetings in private and away from the public eye. I hope this is untrue for it would make it easier for them to pass and support such developments with out the scrutiny of the press and the public. This would be a real kick in the teeth for open Government.

Finally details of the examination of the Rutland Core Strategy by the Secretary of State was been published. It is interesting that it is big on waste disposal while only only attempting to be green. It goes on about green housing but completely misses the point. What is the use of green housing with low carbon footprints when the people living in the houses have to use loads of carbon driving to work in the big cities and towns that are between 18 and 30 miles away. The whole notion that the planned development has a low carbon footprint when you consider this is ridiculous. If this is an example of how the Secretary of State sees green thinking then any notion that the Government is green has no basis in reality.