Tag: Twentieth century
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How many names on your war memorial?
I counted the First World War names on 14,119 community memorials in the Imperial War Museums register. A typical village memorial carries 18.3 names for every 1,000 people living there today, and only 36 of 6,108 small places record no dead.
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Britain’s last line of defence: the pillboxes and stop lines of 1940
I mapped 14,690 wartime defences recorded by Defence of Britain volunteers. The planned German landing beaches had 2.3 times the average density of defence, and 71% of sites with a known condition were still standing.
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Did Beeching Kill Your Town?
3,331 railway stations closed in Britain between 1955 and 1975, and 643 towns in England and Wales lost every one. Size for size, they are a little poorer and more car-bound today, but they did not fall off a cliff.
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Whose ships sank where?
Two centuries of shipwrecks in Europe’s seas, from Wikipedia’s lists: 106,550 wrecks placed on the map by the flag they sailed under. British ships dominate the record, but the Bay of Biscay, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the world wars tell other stories.
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Far from home: where the Victoria Cross was won
Every Victoria Cross has two places: where the recipient was born and where the deed was done. I mapped both for 1,357 awards and measured the distance between them.
