A quick and easy find on our way to the airport at Knock to end our Irish adventure, this morning.
Expedition
Finding the hashpoint was easy. We drove to it, arriving at 10:31, overshooting very slightly and walking back 20 metres (we could’ve done it without even getting out of the car if we’d
cared to). Then we were done.
It’s pretty cold out.
What happened next is where things went wrong. We stopped in Ballyhaunis, half-way between the hashpoint and the airport at Knock, for a comfort break and to find a local geocache. Then
we hiked out to find a second nearby geocache, but the icy conditions on the way back slowed us down considerably (and my mother fell over at least once). We stepped into a cafe for a
quick drink, and apparently my attitude to our imminently-departing flight was so laid-back (in actual fact, I thought we had about half an hour more in-hand than we did) that my mother
decided to reflect it and play laid-back too. Sarcastically, she suggested we stay around Ballyhaunis for a round of cakes, too, and I – not recognising her tone as sarcastic – agreed.
In fact, I thought that her relaxed attitude was because we had a long time until our flight, too. (tl;dr: when two people famed for their sarcasm communicate
sarcastically with one another, they should be careful not to, y’know, completely fuck up their plans for the rest of the day by accident)
As we digested our scones and my mother prepared to pour a second mug of tea, I pulled out my phone and realised to my horror that our plane was scheduled to depart in a little over 40
minutes: I’d got the departure time wrong. She said, “I thought you knew it was close, but you knew something I didn’t, like that it was really late!?” Nope.
We ran as fast as the icy ground would permit us to back to the car and drove at great speed to the airport, just in time to miss the closure of the departure desk. We’d just missed the
last and indeed only flight out of Knock airport that day. Fuck.
Anyway, all of which is to say that we extended the rental on our car, arranged to drop it off at Dublin airport, and drove coast-to-coast across Ireland to get to a more-favourable
airport and a last-minute AirBnB, where we dropped out bags then went out for pizza in a dangerously underlit bar
before listening to some Irish folks music in a different bar and going to bed.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow… we’ll leave the country. I promise.
This can’t be done. Right? Right?! Except maybe it can. I’ve found a few folks with boats and I’m going to phone-around in the morning and see about chartering one.
Expedition
I left lots of voicemails and messages lots of people, but nobody could offer me a lift to this random spot on the edge of Ireland. We later took a tour boat out into the bay but it
didn’t go near it either (but was a delightful ride, and we just-about came within sight of the hashpoint).
It’s actually about 10km away at this point. We could’ve gotten closer, but we couldn’t quite get close enough.
From 1696 until 1851 a “window tax” was imposed in England and Wales1.
Sort-of a precursor to property taxes like council tax today, it used an estimate of the value of a property as an indicator of the wealth of its occupants: counting the number of
windows provided the mechanism for assessment.
The hardest thing about retrospectively graphing the cost of window tax is thinking in “old money”2.
Window tax replaced an earlier hearth tax, following the ascension to the English throne of Mary II and William III of Orange. Hearth tax had come from a similar philosophy: that
you can approximate the wealth of a household by some aspect of their home, in this case the number of stoves and fireplaces they had.
(A particular problem with window tax as enacted is that its “stepping”, which was designed to weigh particularly heavily on the rich with their large houses, was that it similarly
weighed heavily on large multi-tenant buildings, whose landlord would pass on those disproportionate costs to their tenants!)
It’d be temping to blame William and Mary for the window tax, but the reality is more-complex and reflects late renaissance British attitudes to the limits of state authority.
Why a window tax? There’s two ways to answer that:
A window tax – and a hearth tax, for that matter – can be assessed without the necessity of the taxpayer to disclose their income. Income tax, nowadays the most-significant form of
taxation in the UK, was long considered to be too much of an invasion upon personal privacy3.
But compared to a hearth tax, it can be validated from outside the property. Counting people in a property in an era before solid recordkeeping is hard. Counting hearths is
easier… so long as you can get inside the property. Counting windows is easier still and can be done completely from the outside!
If you’re in Britain, finding older buildings with windows bricked-up to save on tax is pretty easy. I took a break from writing this post, walked for three minutes, and found
one.4
There were a few work-related/adjacent activities. But also a table football tournament, among other bits of fun.
One of the things I learned while on this trip was that the Netherlands, too, had a window tax for a time. But there’s an interesting difference.
The Dutch window tax was introduced during the French occupation, under Napoleon, in 1810 – already much later than its equivalent in England – and continued even after he was ousted
and well into the late 19th century. And that leads to a really interesting social side-effect.
My brief interest in 19th century Dutch tax policy was piqued during my team’s boat tour.
Glass manufacturing technique evolved rapidly during the 19th century. At the start of the century, when England’s window tax law was in full swing, glass panes were typically made
using the crown glass process: a bauble of glass would be
spun until centrifugal force stretched it out into a wide disk, getting thinner towards its edge.
The very edge pieces of crown glass were cut into triangles for use in leaded glass, with any useless offcuts recycled; the next-innermost pieces were the thinnest and clearest, and
fetched the highest price for use as windows. By the time you reached the centre you had a thick, often-swirly piece of glass that couldn’t be sold for a high price: you still sometimes
find this kind among the leaded glass in particularly old pub windows5.
They’re getting rarer, but I’ve lived in houses with small original panes of crown glass like these!
As the 19th century wore on, cylinder glass became the norm. This is produced by making an iron cylinder as a mould, blowing glass into it, and then carefully un-rolling the cylinder
while the glass is still viscous to form a reasonably-even and flat sheet. Compared to spun glass, this approach makes it possible to make larger window panes. Also: it scales
more-easily to industrialisation, reducing the cost of glass.
The Dutch window tax survived into the era of large plate glass, and this lead to an interesting phenomenon: rather than have lots of windows, which would be expensive,
late-19th century buildings were constructed with windows that were as large as possible to maximise the ratio of the amount of light they let in to the amount of tax for which
they were liable6.
Look at the size of those windows! If you’re limited in how many you can have, but you’ve got the technology, you’re going to make them as large as you possibly can!
That’s an architectural trend you can still see in Amsterdam (and elsewhere in Holland) today. Even where buildings are renovated or newly-constructed, they tend – or are required by
preservation orders – to mirror the buildings they neighbour, which influences architectural decisions.
Notice how each building has only between one and three windows on the ground floor, letting as much light in while minimising the tax burden.
It’s really interesting to see the different architectural choices produced in two different cities as a side-effect of fundamentally the same economic choice, resulting from slightly
different starting conditions in each (a half-century gap and a land shortage in one). While Britain got fewer windows, the Netherlands got bigger windows, and you can still see the
effects today.
…and social status
But there’s another interesting this about this relatively-recent window tax, and that’s about how people broadcast their social status.
This Google Street Canal (?) View photo shows a house on Keizersgracht, one of the richest parts of Amsterdam. Note the superfluous decorative window above the front door
and the basement-level windows for the servants’ quarters.
In some of the traditionally-wealthiest parts of Amsterdam, you’ll find houses with more windows than you’d expect. In the photo above, notice:
How the window density of the central white building is about twice that of the similar-width building on the left,
That a mostly-decorative window has been installed above the front door, adorned with a decorative
leaded glass pattern, and
At the bottom of the building, below the front door (up the stairs), that a full set of windows has been provided even for the below-ground servants quarters!
When it was first constructed, this building may have been considered especially ostentatious. Its original owners deliberately requested that it be built in a way that would attract a
higher tax bill than would generally have been considered necessary in the city, at the time. The house stood out as a status symbol, like shiny jewellery, fashionable clothes,
or a classy car might today.
I originally wanted to insert a picture here that represented how one might show status through fashion today. But then I remembered I don’t know anything about fashion7. But somehow my stock image search suggested this photo, and I
love it so much I’m using it anyway. You’re welcome.
How did we go wrong? A century and a bit ago the super-wealthy used to demonstrate their status by showing off how much tax they can pay. Nowadays, they generally seem
more-preoccupied with getting away with paying as little as possible, or none8.
Can we bring back 19th-century Dutch social status telegraphing, please?9
Footnotes
1 Following the Treaty of Union the window tax was also applied in Scotland, but
Scotland’s a whole other legal beast that I’m going to quietly ignore for now because it doesn’t really have any bearing on this story.
2 The second-hardest thing about retrospectively graphing the cost of window tax is
finding a reliable source for the rates. I used an archived copy of a guru site about Wolverhampton history.
3 Even relatively-recently, the argument that income tax might be repealed as incompatible
with British values shows up in political debate. Towards the end of the 19th century, Prime Ministers Disraeli and Gladstone could be relied upon to agree with one another on almost
nothing, but both men spoke at length about their desire to abolish income tax, even setting out plans to phase it out… before having to cancel those plans when some
financial emergency showed up. Turns out it’s hard to get rid of.
4 There are, of course, other potential reasons for bricked-up windows – even aesthetic ones – but a bit of a giveaway is if the bricking-up
reduces the number of original windows to 6, 9, 14 or 19, which are thesholds at which the savings gained by bricking-up are the greatest.
5 You’ve probably heard about how glass remains partially-liquid forever and how this
explains why old windows are often thicker at the bottom. You’ve probably also already had it explained to you that this is complete bullshit. I only
mention it here to preempt any discussion in the comments.
6 This is even more-pronounced in cities like Amsterdam where a width/frontage tax forced
buildings to be as tall and narrow and as close to their neighbours as possible, further limiting opportunities for access to natural light.
7 Yet I’m willing to learn a surprising amount about Dutch tax law of the 19th century. Go
figure.
TFTC! I’m not carrying any tickets for UK transport, but I’ve got a (mildly
defaced) British banknote and I found a tram (the number 13, which connected me to my hotel this week) and a ferry (which I then went and caught to go find some more caches!).
Stared at its excellent camouflage for a while before realising what this was! Paddled down by inflatable canoe (picture attached) and landed right by here. Thought to check for local
caches as we deflated the boats and was delighted that this one was right here in this picturesque spot! TFTC.
I just launched my partner’s brother – shown in free attached picture – out in his rowboat to begin his attempt to row from Land’s End to John O’ Groats. Naturally this first involves rowing South, around the headland and past the lighthouse, to
get to Land’s End! So I came up the hill to watch him get started. And while I was at it, I figured I’d find this cache! Took travel bug. TFTC!
I’ve had a tardy summer for blogging, falling way behind on many of the things I’d planned to write about. Perhaps the problem is that I’m still on Narrowboat Time, the timezone of a
strange parallel universe in which everything happens more-slowly, in a gin-soaked, gently-rocking, slowly-crawling haze.
The apparent haze in the centre of this photograph is not the result of gin, however, but of a scuff on the lens of the camera I was using; a fault which was not apparent to me until
after I looked at the pictures, and so – now I’ve pointed it out – you won’t be able to un-see it in any of the other snaps, either.
That’s believable, because this summer Ruth, JTA and I – joined for some of the journey by
Matt – rented a narrowboat and spent a week drifting unhurriedly down the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal… and then another week making a leisurely cruise back up it again.
Symptoms of “boat-lag”, which is a result of spending any significant period on Narrowboat Time, include siestas, lounging, and a generally relaxed and laid-back attitude.
We picked up Nerys, out of Cambrian Cruisers, who also gave us an introduction to the operation of the boat (driving it, filling it with water, pumping out sewage,
generating electricity for appliances, etc.) and safety instructions (virtually all of the canal is less than four feet deep, so if you fall in, the best thing to do is to simply
walk to the shore), and set out towards Brecon. In order to explore the entire canal in the time available, we needed to cover an average of only five miles per day. When
you’re going at about two and a half miles per hour and having to stop to operate locks (there are only six locks on the navigable stretch of the canal, but they’re all clustered
towards the upper end), though, five miles is plenty.
Time spent mooring up, casting off, refilling the water tank, and squeezing past other boats on the narrow canal willalso slow you down. But it’s still worth getting started moving on
a morning, to ensure that you don’t need to compete for one of the more-beautiful spots to tie up at the end of your day’s travel.
The upper end of the canal is by far the busiest, with not only narrowboats cruising up and down but a significant number of day boats (mostly on loan from Brecon) and at least
one tour boat: a 50-seater that you don’t
want to have to wiggle past at sharp corner North of the Bryich Aqueduct. From a navigation perspective, though, it’s also the best-maintained: wide enough that two boats can pass
one another without much thought, and deep enough across its entire width that you needn’t be concerned about running aground, it makes for a great starting point for people who want
some narrowboating practice before they hit the more challenging bits to the South.
The towpath is also a haven for geocachers. Ruth and I are here seen holding GC3698Y, “Jass @ Jammy”, which was hidden only a short walk from where we moored at the end of our first
and third days.
Ruth was excited to find in me a driver who was confident holding the boat steady in a lock. Perhaps an expression of equal parts talent and arrogance, I was more than happy to take
over the driving, leaving others to jump out and juggle the lock gates and lift bridges. Owing to Ruth’s delicate condition, we’d forbidden her from operating the entirely-manual locks, but she made sure to get a go at running one of the fancy
hydraulic ones.
The hydraulic locks aren’t any faster than the unassisted ones, but they don’t take quite so much “pushing”.
After each day’s cruising, we’d find a nice place to moor up, open a bottle of wine or mix up some gin-and-tonics, and lounge in the warm, late summer air.
Matt, Dan and JTA enjoy wine on their moored-up boat. Ruth, who of course can’t drink, is behind the camera.
As we wound our way further South, to the “other” end of the waterway, we discovered that the already-narrow canal was ill-dredged, and drifting anywhere close to the sides – especially
on corners – was a recipe for running around. Crewmates who weren’t driving would take turns on “pole duty”, being on standby to push us off if we got too close to one or the other
bank.
Another effect of the shallow sides was that we’d sometimes have to “walk the plank” to get ashore. On the upside, we could raise the plank at night and feel like we were isolated in
our own little fortress, with its own little drawbridge.
Each night moored up in a separate place gives a deceptive feeling of travel. Deceptive, because I’ve had hiking trips where I’ve traveled further each day than we did on our boat! But
the nature of the canal, winding its way from the urban centre of Brecon out through the old mining villages of South Wales.
Modern narrowboats have a chemical toilet that needs to be “pumped out”. Slightly icky, but probably less nasty than the distant historical alternative, presumably, of putting your
bum over the edge.
The canal, already quite narrow and shallow, only became harder to navigate as we got further South. Our weed hatch (that’s the door to the propeller box, that is, not a slang term for
the secret compartment where you keep your drugs) saw plenty of use, and we found ourselves disentangling all manner of curious flora in order to keep our engine pushing us forwards
(and not catching fire).
Reaching into a dirty, cold, damp hole and pulling out gunky, slimy strands of crap isn’t the most-fun job. And you really want to make sure you’ve taken the key out of the ignition,
too, assuming that you’re fond of your fingers.
Eventually, we had to give up navigating the waterway, tie up, and finish the journey on foot. We could have gotten the boat all the way to the end, but it’d have
been a stop-start day of pushing ourselves off the shallow banks and cleaning out the weed hatch. Walking the last few miles – with a stop either way at a wonderful little pub called
The Open Hearth – let us get all the way to both ends of the navigable stretch of the canal, with
a lot less hassle and grime.
Ruth and JTA at the head of Five Locks, the lowest remaining navigable point of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal.
It’s a little sad coming to the end of a waterway, cut short – in this case – by a road. There’s no easy way – short of the removal of an important road, or the challenging and
expensive installation of a drop lock, that this waterway will ever be connected at this point again. The surrounding landscape doesn’t even make it look likely that it’ll be connected
again by a different route, either: this canal is broken here.
The Cwmbran Tunnel is narrow, 87 yards long, and both ends are badly in need of dredging. Knowing our luck, we’d have gotten grounded in there if we’d have brought the boat that far.
I found myself remarking on quite how well-laid-out the inside of the narrowboat was. Naturally, on a vehicle/home that’s so long and thin, a great number of clever decisions had
clearly been made. The main living space could be converted between a living room, dining room, and bedroom by re-arranging planks and poles; the kitchen made use of
carefully-engineered cupboards to hold the crockery in place in case of a… bump; and little space-saving features added up all along the boat, such as the central bedroom’s wardrobe
door being adaptable to function as a privacy door between the two main bedrooms.
In dining room configuration, we were even able (with judicious use of nearby shelves and the seats alongside us) to play a game of Arkham Horror. And we won, which was perhaps even
more-remarkable.
On the way back up the canal, we watched the new boaters setting out in their narrowboats for the first time. We felt like pros, by now, gliding around the corners with ease and passing
other vessels with narry a hint of a bump. We were a well-oiled machine, handling every lock with ease. Well: some ease. Unfortunately, we’d managed to lose not one
but both of our windlasses on the way down the canal and had to buy a replacement pair on the way back up, which somewhat dented our “what pros we are” feeling.
Our final pass through Brynich Lock was slick and seamless.
Coming to the end of our narrowboating journey, we took a quick trip to Fourteen Locks, a beautiful
and series of locks with a sophisticated basin network, disconnected from the remains of the South Wales canal network. They’ve got a particular lock (lock 11), there, whose unusual
shape hints at a function that’s no-longer understood, which I think it quite fabulously wonderful – that we could as a nation built a machine just 200 years ago, used it for a hundred
years, and now have no idea how it worked.
Our “big” trip to Ikea a few weeks later was significantly bigger, even, than this one, though.
Our next stop was Ikea, where we’d only meant to buy a couple of shelves for our new home, but
you know how it is when you go to Ikea.
We wrapped up our holiday with a visit to Sian and Andy (and their little one), and Andy showed off his talent of singing songs that send babies to sleep. I swear, if he makes an album of
children’s songs and they’re as effective as he is in person, we’ll buy a copy.
MiniRegz and parents.
Altogether, a wonderfully laid-back holiday that clearly knocked my sense of urgency so far off that I didn’t blog about it for several months.
Edit, 22 June 2018: after somebody from the Canal & River Trust noticed that my link to their page on the Brynich Aqueduct was broken after they’d rearranged their
site, I removed it. They suggested an alternative page, but it didn’t really have the same content (about the aqueduct itself) so I’ve just removed the link. Boo, Canal & River Trust!
Cool URIs Don’t Change!
Hellburners (Dutch: hellebranders) were specialised fireships used in the Siege of Antwerp (1584-1585) during the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch rebels and the Habsburgs. They
were floating bombs, also called “Antwerp Fire”, and did immense damage to the Spanish besiegers. Hellburners have been described as an early form of weapons of mass destruction.
Spent last night on the beach with Andy, Alec, Paul, Claire, and others last night. Folks like Andy and Alec are in Aber for the graduate’s ball tomorrow, we we went out for a barbecue. I
took along my new juggling gear and practised juggling flaming brands. I wasn’t very good at it. I need more practice. Today, I have burns all over my arms.
Later, Claire and I borrowed Paul’s dinghy and paddled around in the sea for awhile. That was fun, too. All in all, a good night.
Came in to work late today. This afternoon, in fact. I love it when I get a lie-in. Claire’s uncharacteristically less horny than usual. Down to about my level, for once. Hmm… Anyway:
lots of work to do for the company’s presence at the Royal Welsh Show next week. Better go get on with it.
Feel strangely nostalgic. Perhaps a result of the retro-computer games I’ve been playing. Or the music Alex has put on. Or just too much caffeine. Ah well.
Paul made it to Aber. Woo and indeed hoo. He, Bryn, Kit, Claire, and I went to the beach and drank beer and ate pizza to celebrate. Then Claire and I took turns in an inflatable dingy and I got
soaked as a wave leapt over the side. You’ll probably see their reports of this on their journals, soon, too.
The wiki I was coding got finished. Sadly, only a few of you who read this will ever be allowed to see it, but it’s pretty sweet.
Plothole appeared in the story on Andy’s LiveJournal – he has me drinking tea, which, as everybody knows, isn’t
going to happen on account of (a) caffiene being a really, really bad thing for me and (b) I don’t particularly like tea. Have reported this to him and await feedback.
This made me laugh: type Weapons of Mass Destruction into Google and you’ll get this page. I laughed lots.
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