LAST OF THE THREE

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1934, Page 17 (Supplement)

LAST OF THE THREE

WHAT ALFRED WILLINGALE DID. A VILLAGE HAMPDEN. The last pf a family whose courage saved Epping Forest for the British people has passed away at Loughton. He was Mr. Alfred Willingale, who. living to be 91, has survived his more famous uncle Tom for over 60 years and has witnessed for those Cl years the enjoyment of thousands on the common lands which he and his cousins suffered imprisonment to save. Alfred Willingale was only a labourer, but he was of those of whom Thomas Gray was thinkihg when he wrote:

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast.

The Tittle tyrant of his fields withstood.

Loughton lies in a clearing of Epping Forest, and its inhabitants front time immemorial had a curious privilege, the right of cutting wood in the forest from St. Martin’s Day to St. George’s Day, provided the first stick was cut at midnight on St. Martin’s Eve. All down the centuries a little banu of men would meet on Staples Hill, and wait with gossip and song for midnight Then every man would suddenly spring to his feet, and the sound of the hatchet would ring through the forest. In 1866 the lord of the manor was Parson Maitland. He quietly ordered a fence to be built round all the wasre lands of the manor, enclosing about 1300 acres. No one opposed him, though his action was illegal. On St. Martins Eve of that year, instead of a noisy band, three men set out silently for Staples Hill. They were Alfred Willlngale and his two cousins. They broke down the rector’s new fence and. lopped off the branches of a tree, thus vindicating the people’s ancient right. They were arrested, accused of malicious damage on private properly, and sent to prison. One of them, Samuel, the son of Tom the inspirer of the deed, was lodged in a damp cell and died a day or two after his release. The poor boy’s father strengthened his resolve to stand up for justice and right. The Common's Society, horrified by this act of tyranny, began a lawsuit in his name claiming the right of the villagers to lop in the forest. No one dared to employ him, yet if he left Loughton he would lose his right to plead as an inhabitant, so the society had to support him. ■ Large sums were offered him to give up the suit, but he declared that he would die like his son before he would surrender the people’s rights. The Corporation of London, who (as owners of a cemetery at Wanstead) were commoners too, took up the cause, and after many years of litigation, costing over £30,000, this enclosure and. many others were declared illegal. Tire judges awarded £7OOO to the village as compensation, or in purchase of their rights. Part of the money was spent in building a public hall, appropriately named Lop. ping Hall, and Parson Maitland himself presided at the opening ceremony. But the real hero of it all was not present; poor Tom Willingale had passed away before anything had been settled. Now his nephew has followed him, but with the consolation that young Samuel’s life was not in vain, for never can the people lose tb«w 1 1

EVERYTHING CHANGES IDEA FOR GIANT BUILDINGS. WEMBLEY SWIMMING-POOL. New tilings come so fast that we are hardly aware of them in these days. We wonder how many who follow the progress of building realise the new idea now being carried out in that wonderful building known as the Empire Swim-ming-Pool at Wembley? says the Children’s Newspaper. This giant building has been constructed on an entirely new principle, and its remarkable success is the finest testimony to the daring enterprise, of the architect. We are accustomed to see, in older buildings, the walls of suppling columns widen as they approach the ground, the building itself resting on big and solid foundations which often form an actual part of the lower structure. With reinforced concrete, a steel skeletoned building of the skyscraper type seems to rise from the earth like a sheer precipice, but the huge steel girders ar« embedded in immense concrete foundations perhaps thirty feet or more below the ground. The great edifice built for the Empire Swimming-Pool at Wembley looks to the person passing by as if it might almost rest on pin-points, almost invisible foundations, and yet from the two . sides of the building appear numbers of tremendous flat fin-like masses of reinforced concrete of enormous weight, which look as though they must weigh as an unbearable burden on the fragile vertical walls.

These huge “fins” have no rigid connection with the earth, nor do they play any part in the construction of the walls. They are balanced in mid air, and really act as enormous counter-balancing weights to the great roof of the building. There is a trick well known to boys of sticking two table forks into a cork, one on either side, and balancing the weighted cork on a pin stuck into the bottom of the cork. We can imagine the half roof to be one.table-fork, and the buttresses or fins to be the other, and the cork with its pin delicately balanced on a tremendous concrete foundation buried in the ground. ROOF IN TWO HALVES. The buttresses and their half of the roof are two counter-balancing weights, standing on a stilt, as it were, on the foundation. The two halves of the roof rest lightly against each other and give stability to the whole structure, while the seats of the auditorium, are attached to the buttresses and rest lightly on the ground, giving additional support. Such a big roof will expand several inches during a very hot day, and if made in o'ne solid piece it might easily

bulge the walls out were it fixed rigidly to them. The roof is thus constructed in two halves, which are themselves not rigidly that, each half with its counter-balance balances on one of the two foundations. The day of the huge building has come, where people gather in their thousands and tens of thousands for amusement, and this new idea in architecture is destined to find many new outlets in future design.