28 Dec 10 Cranford Park
In most urban areas, parks and rural areas are quite precious, particularly to the local inhabitants. Cranford Park, with St. Dunstan’s Church, is one of those places, situated with the M4 motorway to its immediate north, and Heathrow Airport barely a mile to the south.
The River Crane runs through the park, and a ford once crossed the river here, about where it goes under the present Bath Road. From this comes the name Cranford.
Records show that a church has been on the current site of St. Dunstan’s within the park, since the 7th or 8th century, when it would have been a Saxon building.
Cranford is mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086, produced under the orders of William the Conqueror.
The land forming the estate of Cranford, and the current park, changed hands several times down the centuries.
The Berkeley family owned Cranford Manor Estate for some 300 years, from 1618 until 1918, when the estate was sold to Middlesex County Council.
In 1945 the Manor House was demolished. It hadn’t been bombed in World War II, but a number of nearby bombs aimed at Heston Aerodrome had left it in a weakened condition.
The present park was opened as a Public Open Space in 1949.
Tags: 1918, aerodrome, centuries, crane, cranford park, domesday book, heathrow airport, heston, inhabitants, m4 motorway, manor house, middlesex county, public open space, rural areas, several times, st dunstan, urban areas, william the conqueror, world war ii
27 Aug 08 Victims of Technology?
Boise, Idaho-based startup M2E Power announced this week it will start selling a cell-phone charger next year that can convert six hours of everyday movement into one hour of talk time.
Here in the developed world we’re “victims” of an earlier technology – i.e the landline phone. Developing nations, and particularly rural areas of developing nations have no such millstone around their necks. The one still-limiting factor with mobile tech of any kind – from cellphones to laptops – is the battery. The technology has come a long way, but it’s still the one thing that is holding true mobility back.
A movement-generated power source is perhaps the way to escape the limitations of chemically generated power.
As an aside, and an important aside, could be much less damage to the environment, if such technology could replace batteries. It’s truly recycled power.
Tags: batteries, cellphones, developing nations, landline phone, laptops, limiting factor, millstone, mobile tech, one thing, power source, rural areas, true mobility
