The upper half of my Hampshire Churches study area. The two kilometre grid is clear without becoming obtrusive (Revit Halftone) Major roads are prominent and minor roads subdued. Thick orange denotes modern highways and town bypass roads. One obvious mistake on this export is the M3 from London to Southampton, (which skims the S.E. edge of Basingstoke) is shown as a minor road. Still a work in progress.
Also showing Rivers and streams which obviously affect village placement. And starting to show country estates which are still quite common, but much more so in 1900. I’m showing the 19th century versions because along with the railways this makes a fascinating record of a turning point in British history. There are also straight lines in dark red which represent Roman roads. Lots of these, giving time depth along with some thick red ellipses to represent Hill Forts, presumably dating to pre-Roman times.
A section of the schedule which occupies the far right edge of the sheet displays basic date embedded in the church objects. Colour coded circles for Saxon/Norman, Medieval, Georgian, Victorian and Modern. I will probably adjust the classification system and the data fields later on, but it’s a good starting point. Names of Architects only really apply from the post-Medieval era, and I haven’t sourced all this data yet, but making steady progress.
The point is that I’m increasing my conscious and sub-conscious grasp of the history of this area which will become the context for my retirement and is already me second home. More and more visits, days out on the bus, hijacking of friends and relatives with cars to come.
Two Grok. My prompts were for Notre Dame and the Bank of England, with a bit of context as to how I wanted them presented. The Notre dame shot suffered contamination from earlier requests. I had asked for a landscape with a watercolour effect. My first attempt to generate an image in Grok and partially using the suggestions it gave me for first use of this feature. Obviously you need to clear the prompts completely, perhaps restart the app.
The Bank of England is a less convincing representation of the building but better interpretation of the context. I asked for late 18th century London and the Bank as designed by John Soane. The people and other props are kind of OK. Is that a horse? Maybe. Not sure about the mountains in the background and the building is a strange amalgam. Some reference to Herbert Baker’s 1930s central feature which is the image you are most likely to see of the Bank as it is today. There is a bit of what could be Tivoli Corner stuck on the end. Totally the wrong place and what’s with the dome? That’s just a hallucination replacing the attic storey that Soane designed and Baker retained.
AI can now speed up the process of finding out who designed a church and pointing to relevant web sites. Also open sources like this book about church plans on project Gutenberg.
In fact Grok wrote me a few useful paragraphs about an architect I hadn’t notice before (Beazley) who worked for G.E.Street. Pointed me to a deanery map. Gave me some information about and interesting prefabricated church in Southampton. All this is grift to the mill as I tap into a database of some 400 churches to inform my understanding of how “Wessex” has evolved over the centuries.
It’s a very rich story and an essential one in my view as we grapple with the ever increasing fragmentation of society and knowledge, the whirlwind of competing narratives bombarding us each day, the erosion of confidence and social cohesion. I can’t change these things in any significant way, but I do hope to keep a sense of perspective, and a reverence for the cultural heritage of my ancestors.
