In just a few weeks time, it will be the 750th anniversary of one of the most important events in English legal history.

On the 7th April 1258, there was a confrontation between King Henry III and his barons in Parliament at Westminster over the power of the crown. Although no formal concession was agreed at that Parliament, the King was forced to agree to a meeting at Oxford a couple of months later to discuss reforms of the Royal power.

The nine years following this event are one of the most important but least understood periods in English history. Before eventually spiralling into a bitter civil war, a significant section of England’s baronage attempted to transform the governance of the realm by imposing a programme of reform that was more far more radical and wide ranging than Magna Carta in 1215. Its radicalism was such that nothing like it was to recur until the political upheavals of the seventeenth century.

Henry had became embroiled in funding a war in Sicily on behalf of the Pope, a state of affairs which made many barons fearful that Henry was following in the footsteps of his father, King John and needed to be kept in check, just as King John had. De Montfort became leader of those who wanted to reassert Magna Carta and force the king to surrender more power to the baronial council.

In 1258 seven leading barons forced Henry to agree to the Provisions of Oxford which effectively abolished the absolutist Anglo-Norman monarchy, giving power to a council of fifteen barons to deal with the business of government and providing for a three yearly meeting of parliament to monitor their performance. The Provisions are generally considered to be the first stages of a written constitution in England.

The key significance was that, for the first time, the English Crown was forced to recognize the rights and powers of Parliament.

In the following years, those supporting de Montfort and those loyal to the king grew more and more polarised; Henry obtained a papal bull in 1261 exempting him from his oath and both sides began to raise armies, the Royalists under Edward Longshanks, Henry’s eldest son. Civil war followed and lasted until 1267 when the rebels and King Henry III of England agree to peace terms as laid out in the Dictum of Kenilworth - which also abolished the Provisions of Oxford.

The Provisions of Oxford were also noted for being the first significant document published in English - in addition to Latin and French, making it as accessible as possible to the people.

Study Day at the National Archives (pdf link)

Yesterday I went to Beckton - not this time for a photo session and general nosy at the industrial stuff - but for honest to goodness shopping.

I am currently clearing out unwanted Dr Who video tapes on eBay and needed some jiffy bags to dispatch my first sales. Rather than getting them delivered by Viking, and getting catalogues from them every other day for a year - I decided to wander over to Staples in Beckton instead. Heck, it was a morning out of the flat as well.

Plan A - DLR to Beckton was catapulted into disarray the moment I arrived at the Canary Wharf station, as the DLR was suspended on the spur up to Poplar which I needed. In hindsight, I should have realised that I could have taken the Jubilee Line, but the coffee hadn’t started working yet so I fumbled my way over on their replacement bus service.

I don’t like buses at the best of times as they keep speeding up and slowing down in a jerky fashion which makes me quite ill.

Anyhow - only a short trip and onto the DLR to Gallions Reach. The Staples I wanted is in one of those “out of town” shopping parks, and hence nowhere near the train station. I had scanned the maps the night before, and having a good memory for maps, knew exactly which route to take to get there from the station.

Except, the maps don’t tell you that the road will have a huge sign saying “NO PEDESTRIANS” on it. Oh.

So, I head along other roads which seem like they might head in vaguely the right direction and end up at the Gallions Reach Shopping Park - which is grandly subtitled as “London’s Shopping Park”. Not sure what the rest of London would think of that.

It is a typical shopping area, with fast food joints and large grey steel boxes called shops. Oh, and a mock airport control tower as a homage to the nearby City Airport, which is annoyingly fake and cant be climbed up to get any decent views.

Incidentally, the shopping park has a website - and according to the link in their home page, the next event there is the launch of the new Harry Potter book in July. I wonder if JK Rowling knows she is supposed to be writing another book?

I am still no where near the other shopping park I needed, so carried on walking along main roads and came to a main junction. It then seemed that the only way to continue was to leave the road and head along a narrow alleyway which had seem many better days - and lots of kids with arsonist tendencies.

Still - I am headed in roughly the right direction and my feet are not hurting yet. Oh, didn’t I tell you - I am limping after a nasty graze on the back of my right foot the other day, so all this extended walking is not good for me at the moment.

Wandering along, the path crosses the Greenway - which is currently not at all green due to winters grip - and back into the narrow footpath. And then suddenly, peering out between the barren trees lining the path I can see the shopping park. Like some Arthurian Holy Grail, I can at last see the red garish sign of the Staples store, and I clamber Parsifal like through the trees and down a muddy slope to arrive in a sterilized car park surrounded by shops and the ubiquitous fast food joints.

Phew!

Into Staples, and almost as if they knew I was coming - the jiffy bags are on a BOGOF deal, so I pick up twice as many as I was going to buy and wander around to see what office supplies I would suddenly realise that I can’t live without.

More Post-it notes? Everyone needs them - although actually I don’t use them at home. A pen tidy - how could I have lived without a pen tidy in my flat. Well, actually I only have one pen and it sits in a draw unused most of the time. No, I don’t need a new wrist rest for my keyboard, although it does look rather fetching. How about some “Fragile” labels for the jiffy bags - now they would look good. Umm, no - not even the incompetence of the Royal Mail could screw up this delivery (I hope).

Avoiding the siren cries of the office stationers, I mange to get out with just what I came in for, and decide to head back via a different route heading towards Beckton station this time.

Along the noisy main roads again - and it is quite obvious that anyone who lives in Beckton is expected to drive everywhere.

Going past the derelict ski slope, I look at it longingly. Thanks to sore foot, I decided not to bring the camera along this time as I knew I would end up climbing the high slope to take photos. That’ll wait for another day, as I also want to take photos of the area anyway and I bet I can get a good panorama from the top of the hill. It is closed off now - but *ahem* it is apparently fairly easy to squeeze through the gaps in the fencing. Like all good Urban Explorers who like getting into places, I wont ever damage the fences/gates to gain access, just squeeze through gaps I find.

Finally down to the DLR, and a much needed sit down on the train back to civilisation (via the Jubilee Line this time) and a decent coffee in the Canary Wharf shopping centre.

I shall start shipping out the video tapes, securely wrapped in their protective jiffy bags tomorrow.

The ever wonderful Building Centre in London will be setting out a new exhibition from the end of next week all about “London’s Hidden Infrastructure”.

28 FEBRUARY – 19 APRIL 2008

As London’s skyline becomes ever more clustered with new developments and tall buildings adding to the historic landscape, it is easy to forget the complex underground infrastructure necessary to service this increasingly crowded over ground. This latest exhibition by The Building Centre will expose London’s inner workings and demonstrate that without a successful underground, what is built on top cannot function.

http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/talks_series.php?id=7

There are also some breakfast lectures and I can be found attending the Crossrail lecture on 5th March and the Underground lecture on 16th April.

Say “hi” if you are going and see me there.

I am sure you are familiar with my fascination with underground tunnels etc - and you probably know that in addition to the obvious tube network and municipal services, that there are a fair number of other tunnels under the city.

Some are tiny lines built just below the surface and of no real interest - but there are some whoppers down there and obvious when you think about it, they are rarely named if you ask people to name the tunnels they think are under their streets.

BT have a large network of deep level tunnels which are human sized for their telecoms network - much of it built very deep during the cold war when BT was state owned as a protection against a nuclear strike on the city. The military have a few very old tunnels under Whitehall, and Thames Water famously built their huge ring mains around London in the 1990s.

What about electricity though?

Well, naturally there are cables running under the streets - but high voltage cables cannot be simply buried in a sub-surface structure, but have to be buried deep underground - and in large tunnels with the cables kept separate from each other to prevent overheating. The work on the Stratford site for the Olympics included one such sizeable tunnel to remove all the above ground electricity pylons. The pylons are being removed now that the tunnel is complete - although one will remain, as a visual marker for people to navigate by.

Anyhow - I was researching the recent deep tunnel construction behind Harrods department store recently (I bet that interested you!), and by accident came across reference to the Wimbledon-Pimlico tunnels dug by London Electricity in the early 1990s and been researching that. Some sort of write up might be forthcoming shortly.

I thought I would offer a teaser though - and here is a map from one report published by the Proceedings of ICE I have which shows the layout of some tunnels under the center of London built recently to carry electricity mains. These tunnels are nearly tube sized in width, so they are quite impressive in scale. Its a bit of a pity that they are so little known as they are a very significant engineering exercise.

I was reading the technical document for the proposed UK-US moon probe which was announced a few days ago. I was reading it as the press release made a short comment about a future mobile phone network on the moon and I needed to know more for my work. Alas, not a lot extra was in the formal document either.

However, there is something in there of interest - the whole moon program is to be funded by that favourite of the government - the Public Private Partnership. Not only are we going to the moon, but the cost will be hidden off the government debt accounts until your children suddenly wake up one morning to a hefty bill from 30 years ago.

What was also quite interesting though, was this quote:

“The U.K.’s experience in PPP includes about 700 contracts now under operation that altogether have raised £65 billion of private investment.”

I have occasionally tried to get some sensible idea as to what the government debt liabilities for the PPP would be - and all replies are usually that the information is commercially sensitive and hence confidential. Now, I am sure the $65 billion is just private sector investment figure and do not include the repayment and service charges payable by the government - so the debt liabilities are probably a lot higher.

I feel slightly sorry for NASA that they are being encouraged to follow this most dubious of government funding methods.

Anyhow, lets at least hope the moon project doesn’t turn into another Metrolink disaster - otherwise a future astronaut may find themselves stranded much like London’s tube users are in the rush hour.

You can download the full document here: http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/assets/channels/resources/publications/pdfs/nasabnscjwg.pdf

As a humour diversion - if they do use PPP as they did on the London Underground - then it may be fun to remember the opening credits to the BBC show, The Adventure Game where the game contestants traveled to the distant world on a tube train traveling through space.