eccentricity

This article about a private royal beach on the Isle of Wight captures all the quintessential discrete eccentricity which characterised the Victorians. It tells us:

“The queen’s bathing machine was unusually ornate, with a front verandah and curtains which would conceal her until she had entered the water. The interior had a changing room and a plumbed-in WC. The royal offspring, meanwhile, were taught how to swim in a “floating bath”, specially designed by Albert, and moored a few hundred metres off the beach. It consisted of two pontoons with a wooden grating suspended between, which could be lowered or raised according to the proficiency of the swimmer.”

I often think many of our ongoing notions of why the countryside and rural England matter have their origins in this slightly mad and deeply inventive era. We could do worse than understand just how eccentric they are – in the field of say Town and Country Planning as one example – to derive a contemporary understanding of the challenges of making anything positive happen in some very small rural places!