It’s 15 December, and you know what that means, don’t you? Yes, that’s right! It’s the 53rd anniversary of the official opening of the silliest pub the world ever saw, the Windsock in Dunstable.
It closed 13 years later because IN A SURPRISE TO EVERYONE it proved impractical to run, but still, as architectural critic Ian Nairn said:
the designer has had quite considerable fun
Thanks to Geoff Quincy, you can now read a full history of this outlandish place — including how its architect, Roy Wilson Smith was also responsible for The Pheasant in Harlington and The Crumpled Horn, Swindon:
Both still exist, and you can see photos inside the Pheasant:
(The last one (of the exterior) suggests that it might have been designed to look like a sitting pheasant, which the b/w shot above doesn’t quite make clear.)
That link to Nairn Across Britain is also worth a click, by the way, to see someone enthusing about buildings and canals and landscape — and for this end title:
Also…
On 15 December 1930, Atholl Oakeley made his wrestling debut, a fact made slightly more remarkable by the fact that he was actually Sir Atholl Oakeley, 7th Baronet of Shrewsbury, whose alma maters included Clifton College and Sandhurst.
He put his sporting prowess down to his grandfather, a man who had once maintained a rally at badminton with his brother lasting 17,500 strokes. He once also claimed that two million people attended a wrestling event he’d organised, though, so…
He also claimed that on his mother’s side, one ancestor was “mate to Morgan the pirate” (by which he meant Sir Henry Morgan, 17th century privateer, deputy governor of Jamaica, and slave-owner) and that he once executed a headscissor takedown on a 9ft opponent.
In his autobiography, Blue Blood on the Mat, he explained his unlikely childhood journey to sporting prowess:
Until I was eleven I had taken no interest whatever in any game. My only reputation was as an undersized fighter of some ferocity. I had recently read Lorna Doone, and the magnificent account of the fight between John Ridd and Carver Doone had a deep and lasting effect on me which I retain to this day. Possibly carried away by these heroes I dislocated the thumb of the late Lord Birdwood and was nearly expelled. This unfortunate episode pro tem. ended my fighting career. However, at about that time the example of a young South African cricket prodigy, J. D. Wyatt-Smith, fired me with enthusiasm for other sports: I never looked back.
He was prone to printing the legend, but the memoir backs up his claim to being ‘undersized’ with the story that he weighed 4 stone 17lbs at 17, and
the school doctor put his foot on the scales at the ‘medical’ which I took in order to gain entry to Sandhurst.
There he was taught to box, and started long-distance running, showing no interest in grappling until an unpleasant encounter in Notting Hill.
So, he signed up at Eugene ‘father of body-building’ Sandow’s Institute of Physical Culture, and built himself up. It was successful, but not all plain sailing.
He was undaunted, however.
It took four hours’ exercise a day for another two years before I again reached twelve stone and recovered my strength. I also followed the body-building diet which Hackenschnlidtt had recommended in his book; this included drinking eleven pints of milk a day. I continued with this torture for a year and a half until George accidentally told me there had been a misprint in his book and it should have read five pints and not eleven!
I reduced my intake of milk and increased my training periods. Soon I was selected for the British International Amateur Wrestling team, later captained it and my career was well under way.
I should, perhaps, point out at this stage this these are all excerpts from just the two-page introduction to Blue Blood on the Mat. He didn’t always approve of the fruits of body-building, though.
…although he was admiring of Zbyszko’s neck, so wide that he could, apparently take a collared shirt and tie on and off over his head without loosening them.
A splendid History of British Wrestling says the sport first caught on in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. Eugene Sandow was a music hall attraction, and so was Jack Carkeek.
The sport first caught on through a Cornish-American ex-miner named Jack Carkeek who would move from theatre to theatre challenging audience members to last 10 minutes with him. His bluff was called one night in London’s Alhambra theatre (now Leicester Square Odeon), when the Russian Georg Hackenschmidt, fresh off a major tournament win in Paris’ Folies-Bergere Palace, answered the challenge. Knowing of Hackenschmidt’s reputation as Europe’s leading Graeco-Roman grappler, Carkeek quickly came up with the excuse that his challenge applied to Englishmen only.
It was Hackenschmidt and his promoter Charles B. Cochran who first popularised the sport, introducing the entertainment/storytelling aspect that still characterises wrestling today.
It was Oakeley and his colleague Henry Irslinger, though, who revived it after WWII and coined the phrase ‘all-in wrestling’, because all holds were permitted.
They launched their new sport with simultaneous bouts in London (where Irslinger fought a Yugoslavian fighter called Modrich) and Manchester, where Oakley took on one Bert Assirati, and they were off. It was the first of many fights for Oakeley.
My fight with Bulldog Garnon made up for its lack of professional skill by its ferocity, as the film taken at the time fully bears out. It was without doubt just about the bloodiest fight since the days of the prize ring. In the second round Garnon blacked my eye with a right hook to which I took exception and retaliated by a knuckle-screw headlock which tore his ear. As a result everything and everybody within reach, including the referee Fred Davis and myself, were smothered in blood. In All-In Wrestling it was not done to fall down on the floor of the ring screaming Foul’ every time anyone got hurt. Nor were fights stopped because of blood.
It seems tragic that he lived too early to feature on World of Sport’s Saturday afternoon wrestling alongside Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy, but his autobiography did enliven the 1970s anyway. Perhaps oddest of all, he had, two years earlier, written another book:
Apparently, the best bit of the legend, for him, was “the magnificent account of the fight between John Ridd and Carver Doone”. It “had a deep and lasting effect on me which I retain to this day”.
I can well believe it.
