8 months silence
That people are still finding and coming to the rediscovering Ripleyville blog is both gratifying and at the same time embarrassing, since I haven’t posted anything to it in 8 months. To me the layout now looks tired, the way the blog operates clunky and a lot of the content on the Victorian industrial village of Ripley Ville needs up-dating.
I also have a duty to those leaving comments which I have not been fulfilling – apart from approving them so they can be seen by visitors.
I wish that I could say that all this is going to change. The long silence has been because I couldn’t see how exactly I was going to get back on top of things. Since October last year (2016) a slight worsening of a chronic heart condition means that I have had to curb some activities and go at some others more slowly. For a number of months I did little rRV work.
Stabilisation of my condition means that I am, now, continuing to research both the history Ripley Ville and what came before – in early Victorian Bowling and Bradford. I am pursuing much of the finer details of the story of the industrial model village itself and of this earlier story. I have begun again to write about these topics off-line, off-blog.
That, I’m afraid, is what will be happening into the foreseeable future.
I will still approve comments you leave. There is no intention, as things stand, to make changes to the blog as it stands.
Bob
rediscovering Ripley Ville : the Beginning after the End
A previous post announced ‘the Beginning of the End’ for the rediscovering Ripleyville blog; the slow retirement of the blog while I carry on with research and writing. This post set out what comes after – A New Beginning!
Or is it?
Not retiring : retiring rediscovering Ripleyville blog – slowly
a short post – making clear what will be happening with the rRV blog and to clear up any misunderstanding
Not retiring : retiring the rediscovering Ripleyville blog – slowly
I received one almost immediate response to my ‘Beginning of the End’ post about the rediscovering Ripleyville blog. It assumed I was ‘retiring’. For some of those who were of working age during the Thatcher years, retiring now isn’t an option, except to real or relative poverty. It is not something I will be choosing.
As I stated in the previous post;
I will still be researching the Victorian history of the area and writing about it.
But:-
… new or consolidated findings about Ripley Ville or Ripley Ville related topics will not be published on this web-site and blog.
rediscovering Ripley Ville blog : the Beginning of the End
This post announces the beginning of the end for the rediscovering Ripleyville blog and sets out some future arrangements for availability of content and keeping in contact.
rediscovering Ripley Ville blog : the Beginning of the End
110 posts and bow out?
If you have been visiting this site over the past 4 years or are visiting for the first time, you may know or notice that there has been no new post to it since May 6th – nearly 4 months.
It hasn’t been a conscious decision not to post. There are two long draft posts awaiting completion, a third has a provisional title, plans for a forth have been sketched. Things have just stopped. Holidays, other priorities, paid work, good walking weather and, when it comes down to it, a tailing off in motivation are major reasons.
I was motivated to get to 100 posts; a total achieved at the beginning of this year. I wasn’t fully satisfied because some of these posts are very short, others are about the so far unsuccessful attempt to promote a rediscovering Ripley Ville project and set-up a Ripleyville group in parallel to the web-site. They were about organisation rather than the process of historical rediscovery or research findings about Ripley Ville.
Wikipedia on Victorian Ripley Ville : wrong! wrong! wrong!
The account on Wikipedia is wrong on a number of crucial points about the worker’s housing built between 1866 and 1868 in the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville, These relate to whether water-closets were installed in each of the 196 Working -mens Dwellings”, on the village’s northern site in Bowling, south Bradford. The errors are identified in this post and a better version of events laid out. The post starts with a RVr news update. It ends by emphasising how regrettable the demolition of the village’s northern site is, in heritage terms.
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2015 and/or rediscovering Ripleyville. All rights reserved. (see sidebar right)
News Update
Work on the new ‘Ripley Ville rediscovered’ (RVr) web-sites on the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville is behind schedule.
Time has been given over instead to exploring several long trails in archival material about the village’s Victorian beginnings. The searches have focused on the water-closets that are understood to have been built in the basements (cellars) of the 196 Workmens Dwellings of the village.
The water-closet controversy : its importance
If water-closets were installed this would make the houses, in their sanitary status and arrangements, the most advanced then built for the working classes. When taken together with the number installed, this would significantly enhance the importance of Ripley Ville as an industrial model village and of ‘Messrs Ripleys scheme…’ for workers housing.
New pebbles in the Ripley Ville pond. Previous ripples felt now.
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker. All rights reserved (see side bar right →)
This post looks to the future for this WordPress hosted rediscovering Ripleyville web-site, blog posts and the rediscovering Ripleyville project. It reveals a plan to gradually move most of its content. This will be split between TWO NEW Ripleyville web-sites. It also notes two events that suggest small changes may be occurring in how Bradford’s Victorian Heritage offer is made. These give encouragement for future activities around rediscovering Ripleyville.
Delving into History & rRV Membership
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
The first part of this post picks up on Graham Wilkinson’s comment about ‘delving into history’ and outlines an idea for a Victorian history and heritage project for Bowling, south Bradford. The second explains the present and likely future position on Membership of the rRV project and for people who have signed up as ‘Friends’ of ‘rediscovering Ripleyville’. Looking towards the future, the post ends on a positive note.
City and Facebook
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
I’m breaking my blogging silence for a very brief post.
Can’t let Bradford City’s well-deserved ‘biggest FA cup upset’ win against Chelsea go by without a mention.
I have also this week backtracked from taking rediscovering Ripleyville onto Facebook, or more accurately getting myself on there as well. They seem to want to know your inside leg measurement and which way you dress before your personal profile is ‘complete’. O K I’m exaggerating but sorry Face-bookers I’ve looked at it and it’s just not my thing. So, the ‘Rediscovering Ripleyville’ Facebook page will be deleted. This will happen, in their words, ‘within the next 14 days’.
Any rRV up-dates to the end of February will now go through this site.
2015/01/25
Copyright R L Walker 2015. All rights reserved.
See you again?
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
This is a “See you again, sometime” post; the type of “good-bye” that is not intended to be final but where you make no immediate plans for when you might meet.
After three weeks and a follow-up appointment at Bradford Royal Infirmary, the hope is that my ‘something and nothing’ is probably more of a nothing – or at least unlikely to recur. We shall see. But, with each passing week, the three weeks without doing a post on the blog have confirmed for me that I have made the right decision. For the foreseeable future other priorities, including research on Victorian Ripley Ville, must come first.
What the … ?
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
Yes – come a bit out of the blue hasn’t it?
All the rRV blog posts are now “password protected” – rather than just a few.
It wasn’t planned.
It was one of those ’something and nothing’ things that brought it about. I had a couple of days in hospital last week; nothing life threatening though it was unpleasant enough for me to want to avoid a repeat. But it did make me stop.
Once stopped and under doctor’s instructions to, “Take it easy for a week”, plans that would have taken the blog and the rediscovering Ripleyville project through to and beyond 15th November next year – and Ripley Ville’s 150th anniversary – just started to unravel.
rediscovering Ripley Ville 
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