Basildon Heritage

I wrote a while back, a little disparagingly I must admit, about the "Basildon Heritage Trail". Well, a few weeks back we tried it out. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, but today we went back into Basildon and I did have my camera. So here are a few photos.

First of all the Armillary Sundial, "a symbol of optimism and progress." I rather like it but I don't really know how it symbolises "optimism and progress". Unless the optimism bit is that the sun will be out in order to tell the time - which it wasn't. But never mind!


On to the "Mother and Child fountain". This was being 'maintained' last time and behind hoardings, so it was nice to see it working again. But I'm not sure what the mother and child are actually doing ...

People had thrown money into the pool and we wondered, "WHY?" But if the Council collects it up and puts it into their coffers, we might get a reduction on the Council Tax. After all, every little helps!

Next is an untitled sculpture in aluminium and wire. Maybe he didn't know what to call it - come to think of it, neither do I. But it deserves a special mention as the oldest piece of public art in town - dated at 1957.

Finally a sundial and compass built into the paving stones. It's rather good as you stand on the correct position and become the sundial yourself, pointing to the time. That is, if the sun is shining, which it wasn't, of course!

But what deserves special mention is that you have to stand on the correct month of the year, to take into account that sundials can be up to about 35 minutes out. This is because the earth has an elliptical orbit (I learnt all this from an elderly man who had a passion for sundials and gave us a talk all about it when we were in Barnet).

Another exhibit in the Trail you can partly see in the sundial picture below is the Basildon bell tower. "The only steel and glass bell tower in the world" Wow! What a first for Basildon! Actually, the Trail is worth doing. Well, if you live close by, I'm not expecting people to travel for 100's of miles ...