- St Laurence's Church, Reading
- Market Place, Reading
- Milk Bar, Reading
- Harris Arcade, Reading (photo from our Strength Collective exhibition)
Looking up St Laurence's Church, whose grounds I had been in before (for the Strength Collective Festival), I thought it would be nice to tie it in with people associated with the church. There is a rather touching memorial to a young Henry West who had been blown off the roof of Reading station when it was being built. Given that Reading station had been re-vamped this year, it seemed to tie in nicely.
I also discovered that John Blagrave (a famous mathematician) was from Reading and has a memorial there. His descendent David Harber had taken part in the Chelsea Flower Show, and in wanting to make a tribute to his hero, discovered that Blagrave was in fact an ancestor of his. Harber states that Blagrave seems to have been keen to show that mathematics was of "general advantage and indispensable in many necessary conveniences of life".
This appealed to me - and I looked up astrolabes (and though they are much older than Blagrave - I learnt a few things in the process).
I know nothing about the stars - they don't usually show up in London. The sparkles in the skies are planes. However, more can be seen in Reading.
Apparently, Chaucher had written a treatise (here it is in plain English) to his son about how to make and use these and there's an example of this in the British Museum. This TED talk by Tom Wujec demos the principle and the uses. And this excellent site from Cambridge has a lovely way of making your own (of course, there's an iphone app as well) and how to use it.
I printed the Cambridge pages in order to make my own.
It may a nice thing to do in St Laurence's Church to make your own, and display what the stars look like on a particular night (I'm sure there are records from Nasa) and use the astrolabe to see if it works. Or run a workshop on it in there.
Blagrave also made an eccentric bequest to Reading to give 20 nobles to 3 maids of good character every Good Friday at the Town Hall - not sure how to tie that in but will turn up at the Town Hall next year.
