The bridge was originally built to accommodate two lanes of traffic and one streetcar line; a 1982 re-decking allowed for the creation of a reversible third automobile lane.
The bridge received its name because it is located at a historically significant site pertaining to George Washington's military career. In 1753, then-Major Washington was dispatched to give French forces an ultimatum to negotiate for the return of the lands that today make up Western Pennsylvania to the British or to prepare for a military strike. Crossing the Allegheny on a wooden raft, Washington was nearly killed when his vessel overturned at this site.


WikiWeb_Washington State History Museum_0

The Washington State History Museum is a history museum located in downtown Tacoma, Washington, United States. It is operated by the Washington State Historical Society under the official approval of the Washington State Legislature. The museum opened on August 10, 1996, at a building adjacent to historic Union Station that cost $42 million to construct.
The museum maintains three permanent exhibits. One is about the history of Washington state and its relation to the Pacific Northwest, featuring artifacts from women's suffrage, industrialization, Native American tribes and items such as Clovis points. The uppermost floor of the museum contains the History Lab, where visitors can explore and learn about history in a more hands-on fashion with multiple interactive exhibits. The top floor is also home to the state's largest permanent model train layout, which covers 1,700 sq ft (160 m²) and recreates scenes from Tacoma's Union Station (which is located next to the museum) and other regional railroads. The museum hosts an annual Model Train Festival in December.


The oldest record of the shrine was found in the Azuma Kagami, the official historical record for the Kamakura Shogunate. It had the patronage of the Imperial family, and even Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Various folk-culture and performing art events, including the Saibara-Kagura Festival are held here. Its traditional dance handed down through generations has been designated as a national intangible folk-culture asset. The shrine also houses several ancient relics.
During the New Year season, the shrine receives no fewer than 100,000 visitors.
The torii gate of the shrine collapsed in 2018.


The August 2007 issue of the Newtype magazine ran an article on the various locales featuring in the popular anime and manga Lucky Star, and provided directions on how to reach these places from the otaku hotspot Akihabara, including the Washinomiya Shrine which had its torii shown in the opening sequence and featured the Hiiragi sisters working as miko in the anime.
Shortly afterwards, massive otaku pilgrimages to the shrine became the most widely reported consequence of the feature's publication. It became a place teeming with photographers trying to replicate scenes from the anime, cosplayers wandering around, and prayer plaques ridden with anime drawings and strange prayers like "Konata is my wife".
The head of the shrine raised concerns that the visitors were worshipping "deities" other than the shrine's own. The locals were divided on the situation, with some suggesting that it was good for the shrine to have so many worshippers, and some being concerned about the town's security. The visiting otakus, although considered unusual, were generally described as being well-mannered. Eventually, many local residents embraced the otaku, with some profiting from the new traffic and influx of people. This social phenomenon was subsequently satirized in the twenty-first episode of the anime.
On December 2, 2007, Kagami Yoshimizu and 4 cast members of Lucky Star held a brunch and "official" visit of the shrine. A highlight of the visit was a guided tour by the voice actors of the "Hiiragi sisters" (Emiri Kato and Kaori Fukuhara) leading the other two VA's and fans around the real shrine.


Wat Hua Lamphong (Thai: วัดหัวลำโพง) is a Royal Buddhist temple, third class, in the Bang Rak District of Bangkok, Thailand.
It is located on Rama IV Road, with Si Lom Road and Suriwong Road in Bangkok's modern business district to the southeast, and Si Phraya Road to the northwest. It is a block from The Montien hotel, and approximately 1 km from the city's main Hua Lamphong railway station. An entrance to Sam Yan Station on the Bangkok metro is located outside the main entrance to the temple compound on Rama IV road.


Wat Hua Lamphong was renovated to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ascension to the throne of King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 1996. The royal seal of what became known as the Kanchanapisek, or Golden Jubilee, year, showing two elephants flanking a multi-tiered umbrella, features extensively in the temple's remodelling.


Inside the temple compound, the ubosot and viharn are unusual in being raised on a one-story high platform, accessed by a wide staircase. The platform also supports the temple's chedi.
The compound in front of and below the ubosot platform is home to a number of shrines dedicated to important Thai Buddhist figures, including King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), and the Hindu god Ganesha.
The temple compound also contains a crematorium, and living quarters for monks.


Wat Rakhangkhositaram Woramahaviharn (Thai: วัดระฆังโฆสิตาราม วรมหาวิหาร)  or usually shortened to Wat Rakhangkhositaram (วัดระฆังโฆสิตาราม), familiarly known as Wat Rakhang (วัดระฆัง) is a second-class royal monastery in Bangkok, Thailand. It's located at 250/1 Arun Amarin Road, Siri Rat Subdistrict, Bangkok Noi District, Thonburi side on the west bank of Chao Phraya River near Siriraj Hospital, Wang Lang Market and Ban Khamin Junction.
The temple, formerly named "Wat Bangwayai" (วัดบางหว้าใหญ่; lit: big black plum temple), was built in the Ayutthaya period. It was restored and appointed a royal temple by King Taksin of the Thonburi Kingdom, who sponsored the revision of the tripitaka scriptures at the temple. During the reign of King Phutthayotfa Chulalok (Rama I), a melodious rakhang or bell was found in the temple compound. The king order it to be moved to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew), and had five new bells sent back in exchange. The king then changed the temple's name to Wat Rakhangkositaram. In the reign of King Mongkut (Rama IV) the name was to be changed again to "Wat Rajkanthiyaram" (วัดราชคัณฑิยาราม; "kanthi" meaning bell). But people don't accept this name, and the temple is still called Wat Rakhang today.
Highly venerable monk, Somdej Toh was once the abbot of this temple (1852–72). At present, the temple has an old tripitaka hall, which inside, there're beautiful and precious Thai paintings. Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) have encouraged Wat Rakhangkhositaram as one of the nine temple-based campaign "Respect to the Nine Temples" (ไหว้พระ 9 วัด) along with other temples in Bangkok including (Phra Nakhon side): Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Pho, Wat Chana Songkhram, Wat Suthat, City Pillar Shrine, San Chao Pho Suea (Thonburi side): Wat Arun and Wat Kalayanamitr.


The Wawel Dragon (Polish: Smok Wawelski) is a famous dragon in Polish mythology who lived in a cave at the foot of Wawel Hill on the banks of the Vistula River. One of the many popular stories about the dragon takes place in Kraków during the reign of King Krakus, the city's mythical founder. In the legend, the dragon terrifies local villagers by destroying their houses and eating up their young daughters. Desperate to solve the problem, King Krakus promises his daughter Wanda's hand to any brave man who can defeat the dragon. A cobbler named Skuba takes up the challenge and stuffs a lamb with sulphur for the dragon to eat. Skuba leaves the lamb near the dragon cave and the unwary beast devours the bait. Soon after, the dragon's thirst grows unbearable and he drinks so much water from the River Vistula that he explodes from the uncontainable volume. King Krakus then weds his daughter Wanda to the victorious Skuba.
In the oldest, 12th-century version of this tale, written by Wincenty Kadłubek. the dragon was defeated by two sons of a King Krak, Krakus II and Lech II.


Wedgwood Rock is a glacial erratic (known to geologists as the Wedgwood Erratic) near the neighborhood of Wedgwood in Seattle, Washington. Its mineral composition matches that of Mount Erie, on Fidalgo Island in Skagit County, Washington, 55 mi (89 km) north. Prior to the establishment of the Wedgwood neighborhood, the erratic was known first as Lone Rock and later simply as Big Rock. Transported to its site by the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet during the Vashon Glaciation more than 14,000 years ago, it was a landmark for Native Americans in what was once a dense forest.
Today, the rock sits in a residential neighborhood on 28th Avenue NE, near NE 72nd Street, still surrounded by trees and brush, and kept clear by local residents.


In 1881, the rock, known at the time as Lone Rock, was part of the 160-acre farm of William Weedin. An anonymous 1881 letter to the Seattle Daily Intelligencer about a Fourth of July picnic at the rock described it as "in a dense forest" on Weedin's land, and as "a single rock 80 feet (24 m) in circumference and 19 feet (5.8 m) in height, rather oval-shaped, covered with a solid network of moss and interspersed with liquorice, with its graceful fern-shaped foliage hanging in festoons around it." This rock has an estimated mass of 700 metric tons.
In 1888 the Weedin property passed to Mary Miller, widow of William Miller. William Miller, an ally of Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, fought in the Puget Sound War and Yakima War of 1856–1857.


By the early 20th century, the rock was known as Big Rock. With the Miller family's permission, members of Seattle's Mountaineers Club practiced their rock climbing techniques there. Edmond S. Meany, president of Mountaineers and a professor at the nearby University of Washington brought his students to the rock to learn about glacial movement and land forms. Later, Boy Scouts also learned to climb there, taught by German-born climber and scout leader Wolf Bauer. REI founder Lloyd Anderson taught Mountaineers and Boy Scouts at the rock. Among the prominent climbers whose training started at Big Rock were German-born Fred Beckey and Jim Whittaker, who became the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest.
Mary Miller's son Winlock Miller, a member of the U.W. Board of Regents and a promoter of Mount Rainier National Park, kept the land around the rock undeveloped into the 1940s. He sold in the 1940s to developer Albert Balch, who promised Miller that the area immediately around the rock would be preserved as a park, but failed to keep the promise. In 1946, a citizens group tried and failed to convince the Seattle City Council to preserve the area as a park against landowner Balch's wishes.
Although surrounded by houses, the rock remained a destination for picnickers, university students, climbers, and, in the 1960s, hippies. In reaction to the last and their perceived drug use, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance in 1970 making it a crime to climb the rock, punishable by a fine up to $100.


The  Weißeck (2,711 m (AA)) is the highest mountain in the Radstadt Tauern range in Austria and is popular, both as a ski touring destination in winter and a climbing peak in summer. It gets its name (which means "white corner") from the mighty block of light-coloured Wetterstein dolomite of which the mountain is made.
The summit of the Weißeck is located on the municipal boundary between Muhr, in the national park, and  Zederhaus, in the nature park.
Bases for tours to the Weißeck are, on one side, the Riedingtal valley in Zederhaus, and, on the other, the Stickler Hut (1,752 m) in the upper Mur valley. The normal route from the Rieding gap along the western ridge to the top is signed and only requires a little sure-footedness, but is generally an easy climbing grade.
There are several legends about the Weißeck. The best-known is about the Weißeck dog. The Weißeck is also popular with mineral collectors; since time immemorial it has been a well-known site for finds of fluorite.


Riedingtal: Königalm – Zauneralm – Rieding gap (Riedingscharte) – Weißeck (ca. 1,050 metre height difference)
Upper Mur valley: Stickler Hut – Rieding gap – Weißeck (ca. 950 metre height difference)


The Wellhorn is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Rosenlaui in the Bernese Oberland. On its eastern side is the Rosenlaui Glacier.


Wernigerode Castle (German: Schloss Wernigerode) is a schloss located in the Harz mountains above the town of Wernigerode in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The present-day building, finished in the late 19th century, is similar in style to Schloss Neuschwanstein, though its foundations are much older. It is open to the public and one of the most frequently visited in Saxony-Anhalt.


The first mention of the Saxon noble Adalbert of Haimar, Count of Wernigerode, in an 1121 deed is also the first documentation of the settlement, which had been founded about a century earlier in connection with the deforestation of the area. The counts built the castle on a slope south of the town as their residence; it was first mentioned as a castrum in 1213. When the line became extinct in 1429, the Wernigerode lands were inherited by the neighbouring County of Stolberg. The castle became the seat of the subordinate Amt administration and was put in pledge several times.
When in 1645 the Stolberg-Stolberg line split, Wernigerode again became the capital of the County of Stolberg-Wernigerode. The counts however struggled with the citizens in the course of the Thirty Years' War and had to take their residence at nearby Ilsenburg House. It was not until 1710 that Count Christian Ernest could relocate the seat of government back to Wernigerode, when he had the castle rebuilt as a schloss in a Baroque style. He ruled for 61 years, though he had to accept the overlordship of King Frederick William I of Prussia in 1714.
Christian Ernest's descendant Count Otto, first president of the Prussian Province of Hanover from 1867, president of the Prussian House of Lords from 1872 and German Vice-Chancellor from 1878, had the schloss again extensively rebuilt in a Neo-Romantic, style known as historicism, finishing the project in 1893. The entire complex includes a chapel built in 1880 according to plans by the renowned Vienna architect Friedrich von Schmidt. In 1945 the building was seized by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany.


West Montrose Covered Bridge, also known as the "Kissing Bridge", is a covered bridge in West Montrose, Ontario, within Waterloo Region, one of the oldest covered bridges in Canada. (In 2015, the total number of surviving covered bridges in Canada was below 200.) John Bear, who had previously built barns, built the bridge in 1880–1881, mostly of oak and white pine. The total cost to the Township of Woolwich was $3,197.50. The structure can still be used by pedestrians, buggy traffic and vehicles weighing less than three tonnes for crossing the Grand River. Since 1998, it has been owned and maintained by the Regional Municipality of Waterloo.
The bridge's original design was described as a "two-span hybrid Howe truss" or as a "hybrid Queen Post – Howe timber configuration" with two louvred windows. (Additional windows, visible today, were added at some later date.) The entire structure was originally built of wood. Its weight was supported by 15 piles driven deep into the river bed. At the time of construction, the estimated useful life of the structure was 70 to 80 years. That was significantly increased with subsequent restorations.
The primary modifications during restorations added concrete and steel parts to strengthen the aging structure. However, the current visible form of the bridge remains true to the original design.


The first records of this bridge include a call for tender in 1880 by John L. Wideman of nearby St. Jacobs, Ontario, for a covered bridge to span the Grand River. The cost would be shared by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the township of Woolwich. The contract was given to the Bear Bros., John and Benjamin. Drawings and five pages of specs were completed by John Bear who indicated that hardwood was used throughout, although the rafters and the sheets over the sides would be made of pine. The wood was obtained from the nearby villages of Bridgeport, Blair and Doon. The opening date of the bridge was 15 November 1881 but it was not painted (with "residual oil and fire proof paint") until May of the following year.
Starting in the mid 1800s, this area of Waterloo County was settled primarily by Mennonite Germans from Pennsylvania. The horse and buggy was the primary transportation and in winter, the wheels were replaced with sleigh runners. This required the township to hire an individual to shovel snow onto the bridge roadway to avoid damage to the flooring. From 1885 until 1950, coal oil lamps were lit inside the bridge overnight; they were replaced by electric bulbs.
This was not the first covered bridge in Waterloo County. The Shingle Bridge in Blair (part of Preston, Ontario) was built before 1835, the first of this type in the area, but was destroyed by flood waters in 1857. By 1900, there were only five covered bridges in all of Ontario and no others in this area.
Several restorations were completed over the years. The wooden abutments were replaced with concrete some time after 1900. In 1904, new planks were laid over the oak floor. New wooden trusses were installed in 1933. In 1955, part of the floor was replaced and covered with crushed stone. In 1959, parts from an old Bailey truss bridge were used to replace the internal structure; metal parts were hidden by pine panels. The roof was re-shingled in 1987 and some beams were replaced in 1995 and 1996. In late 2012 to early 2013, a floor beam replacement and some roof repairs were completed.
In 1959, the township diverted traffic onto the new Highway 86 (now Township Line 86) after constructing a new concrete bridge. This strategy minimized the number of vehicles driving through the small settlement and helped to lengthen the useful life of the covered bridge.


The West Montrose Covered Bridge was designated as a Provincial Historic Site in August 1960. In 2007, the Township of Woolwich designated it as being of cultural heritage value or interest under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act (By-law 60-2007). It was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places on 28 November 2007.
In 2018, the structure was one of the eight recognized under the region's Heritage Bridge Recognition Program.


The bridge was featured in the film In the Mouth of Madness (1995), and
some scenes for It (2017) were filmed around the covered bridge. The latter movie is set in the state of Maine where nine covered bridges still exist.


The West and East Mitten Buttes (also known as the Mittens) are two buttes in the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in northeast Navajo County, Arizona. When viewed from the south, the buttes appear to be two giant mittens with their thumbs facing inwards.
The Mittens are about 0.6 mi (0.97 km) from the Arizona–Utah state line and West Mitten Butte is 1.1 mi (1.8 km) northeast of the park headquarters. The summit of West Mitten Butte is 6,176 ft (1,882 m) and East Mitten Butte is 6,226 ft (1,898 m) in elevation. The Mittens form a triangle with Merrick Butte about 2⁄3 mi (1.1 km) to the south and, with Sentinel Mesa, a more extensive plateau, towards the northwest. At the End of March and mid-September for a few days only at sunset the Mitten Shadow, a photographer's dream occurs. At this specific time the West Mitten shadow appears on the East Mitten.
The buttes are made of three principal rock layers. The lowest layer is Organ Rock Shale, the middle is de Chelly Sandstone, and the top layer is the Moenkopi Formation, capped by Shinarump Conglomerate.


Although it is the oldest of the Wiltshire white horses, the origin of Westbury White Horse is obscure. It is often claimed to commemorate King Alfred's victory at the Battle of Ethandun in 878, and while this is quite plausible, there is no trace of such a legend before the second half of the 18th century. Perhaps more believable is a theory that it was created at a much later date to commemorate this early "English victory", particularly as King Alfred had a very strong following in England from the 17th Century onwards, see for example King Alfred's Tower.
Historians have generally located the battle of Ethandun Battle of Edington on the high ground, somewhere within a few kilometres of the white horse, which would have been a strong defensive position for Alfred and the Saxons of Wessex, marching north-east from Egbert's Stone (popularly believed to be located at Kingston Deverill or King Alfred's Tower nearby), whilst facing the Danes led by Guthram, advancing south-west from their stronghold in Chippenham. It is popularly believed that Bratton Castle, the iron age hillfort immediately adjacent to the white horse may have played some part in the battle, but there is no evidence of this, and the 'fortress' referenced in Medieval texts is much more likely to have been the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Chippenham, which had been occupied by Guthram's Danes as their headquarters. Local legend asserts that the defeated Danes fled down the slopes to the springs that rise between the villages of Bratton and Edington (after which the battle was named), and the slopes on which the white horse is located. Again, according to local legend, many exhausted Danes were massacred in the woods and boggy ground there by pursuing Saxons, the survivors fleeing north-eastwards, pursued by Alfred's men all the way to Chippenham. However, there are some who dispute this account and believe this key battle was fought elsewhere, as there is very little real evidence either way, it remains contested, although the majority agree the vicinity of Edington is the most likely, and logical site.
A local site, just to the north-east of the white horse is Luccombe Vale, which has a locally famed 'bloodstone' said to be connected with the massacre of Danish prisoners after the battle.
According to local tradition, the current white horse was cut in 1778 by a Mr Gee, who overlaid a smaller, older chalk figure, believed to also have been a horse, the only surviving image of which dates to 1772, and shows a figure facing the other way with a long tail. During the 19th and early 20th Centuries the figure was periodically reshaped and repaired.
Another hillside chalk figure, the Uffington White Horse, featured in King Alfred's early life. He was born in the Vale of White Horse, not far from Uffington in Oxfordshire. Unlike the recorded history of Westbury, documents as early as the eleventh century refer to the "White Horse Hill" at Uffington ("mons albi equi"), and archaeological work has dated the Uffington White Horse to the Bronze Age, although it is not certain that it was originally intended to represent a horse.
A white horse war standard was associated with the continental Saxons in the Dark Ages, and the figures of Hengest and Horsa who, according to legend, led the first Anglo-Saxon invaders into England, are said to have fought under a white horse standard (a claim recalled in the heraldic badge of the county of Kent).
During the 18th century, the white horse was a heraldic symbol associated with the new British Royal Family, the House of Hanover, and it is argued by some scholars that Westbury White Horse may have first been carved in the early 18th century as a symbol of loyalty to the new Protestant reigning house.
In Alfred and the Great White Horse of Wiltshire (1939), the Downside Abbey monk Dom Illtyd Trethowan debunked the suggested connection of the White Horse with Alfred and the Battle of Ethandune. Paul Newman suggests in his book Lost Gods of Albion (2009) that the horse may have been inspired by the popularity of folly buildings in the 18th century.
Wiltshire folklore has it that when the nearby Bratton church clock strikes midnight, the white horse goes down to the Bridewell Springs, below the hill, to drink.


By 1872 the horse was considered to have lost shape, by the chalk repeatedly growing over and being recut. In 1873 it was remodelled by a committee, and at the same time substantial edging-stones were added all around the perimeter, to prevent the shape from changing again.
During the Second World War, the chalk of the horse was turfed over to prevent German pilots from using it for navigation. Nearby Westbury was the site of a major railway hub, and internment camps for both foreign nationals (mostly Italians), and prisoners of war, who laboured on local farms and in local factories, later in the war it was also the site of a large US military base, so was considered a potential target.
The horse was illuminated at night in 1900 and again in 1950, both times using army equipment. For the 1950 event, which used world war two searchlights, traffic in Westbury and Bratton came almost to a standstill as drivers slowed down to look.
In 1957 the horse was concreted over and painted white by Westbury Urban District Council, in an attempt to save on long-term maintenance costs, as the chalk of the face was eroding and unstable, due to the steepness of the slope.
Since then, the concrete has tended to turn grey and deteriorate over time, requiring regular cleaning, as well as periodic repairs and repainting. It was thoroughly cleaned in 1993. and in 1995, the concrete facing from 1957 was replaced and repainted. Also in the early 1990s, it was given 'zebra stripes' of black plastic as a protest against a planned prison in Westbury.
In 2003, the horse was vandalised when "Stop This War" was written in yellow across the horse in capital letters in protest of the Iraq War. After the words were removed, the horse was noticeably grey with a white horizontal strip where the message had been. In November 2006, the horse was repaired and repainted again. The newly whitened horse was illuminated on the night the repairs were finished, by Second World War searchlights, as in 1950.
In July 2010, the neck of the horse was vandalised when the word "wonkey" was written across it. This part of the neck had to be rewhitened in 2010, leading to the horse having a whiter neck than the rest of the body.
The BBC reported that the horse was to be cleaned again in 2012. Work began on 11 April 2012 and was completed on 19 April 2012. The cleaning coincided with the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Celebrating the completion of the work, again the horse was lit up with searchlights. Since the annual Village Pump Festival moved from Farleigh Hungerford to the White Horse Country Park beneath the horse in 2012, the horse has been illuminated at night whilst the festival has been taking place. This is achieved via a tinted spotlight which changes colour every couple of seconds, so the horse appears different colours.
Two visitor information signs, on the hill above the horse and in the Viewing Area car park, were placed in 1999 following the completion of Devizes White Horse; the signs show all eight Wiltshire White Horses. Also on the side of the hill is a toposcope dated 1968, mounted on a small stone structure, which identifies the towns and cities that can be seen from the hillside. For the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a fire beacon was placed to the side of the road on the top of the hill leading to the car park on 3 June 2002, that resembles the millennium beacons. It is lit sporadically, and was lit for the 70th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May 2015.
BBC News had a video in June 2018 showing the horse being cleaned with high pressure water jets by up to 18 volunteer abseilers. The cost was given as £3,000, paid for by Westbury Town Council. It stated that the previous clean was in 2016.


The Horse can be viewed from up to 16–17 miles (26–27 km) in all directions. From the horse, Westbury and Trowbridge can be closely observed. The Mendip TV Mast on the Mendip Hills in Somerset can be seen clearly to the west, particularly at night. From the top of the horse and Bratton Castle, Devizes White Horse and Alton Barnes White Horse can both be viewed. The horse itself cannot be seen from other hill figures. Two of the furthest views of the horse are said to be from Beckford's Tower in Bath and from the tower of St Michael's Church, Dundry near Bristol.
A car park on Bratton Road on the B3098 which passes beneath the horse is known as Westbury White Horse Viewing Area. It has fifteen parking spaces and information boards on the horse.
In 1961 a 400-foot-tall (122 m) chimney was built at the Blue Circle cement works about a mile and a half away from the horse. The Blue Circle company was bought in 2001 by Lafarge and the chimney was last used in 2010: it was demolished on 18 September 2016. Some considered it an eyesore whilst others considered it a local icon, a debate covered by a BBC Wiltshire radio broadcast in 2011. Many further views of the horse also included the chimney and the chimney was the most prominent feature of the view from the horse; some considered the chimney to spoil views from the hill. As the horse has been vandalised several times, so too the chimney was defaced in 2010 by the addition of a Union Jack flag.
The landscape of the horse was threatened in 2013 when Wiltshire Council revealed plans for a potential three-lane bypass that would run within half a mile of the horse, with a 35-acre (14 ha) business park and 550 new homes on Green Belt land. Some local residents, together with many from outside the town, were against the "Swindonisation" of their corner of West Wiltshire, although many residents felt that Westbury, as the only town on the A350 without a bypass and whose medieval heart was blighted by pollution and HGVs needed a bypass.


Although the horse is only presumed to commemorate King Alfred's victory at the Battle of Ethandun, an official monument to the victory was erected atop the hill, adjacent to Bratton Camp. The monument does not have an official name but is known as the Battle of Ethandun Memorial. It consists of a large sarsen stone (stone of remembrance) with a "pebbled" base, on which lies a metal commemorative plaque. The monument was unveiled 5 November 2000 by the 7th Marquess of Bath.
King Alfred's Tower, near Stourhead, is the best known monument that was definitely built to celebrate King Alfred and his victory. The folly tower was erected in 1772, six years before the white horse was redesigned.


The White Horse was referenced in G. K. Chesterton's epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse (1911) and the books The Tontine (1955) by Thomas B. Costain, The Emigrants (1980) by Caribbean author George Lamming, and in the novel The English Patient (1992) by Michael Ondaatje, as the place where the sapper Kip learned how to deactivate bombs. Michael Morpurgo mentioned it as one of the inspirations for The Butterfly Lion.
The figure can be seen in the music video for Scottish guitarist Midge Ure's 1996 single "Breathe", and is featured in the current opening titles of the regional television news programme ITV News West Country. Furthermore, it featured in a 2015 Visit England tourist advertisement produced in association with the England rugby team.
The horse lends its name to White Horse Business Park outside Trowbridge and White Horse Country Park outside Westbury. The horse overlooks both parks. White Horse Way is also a name of a street in Westbury, and the town's visitor centre features the horse in its logo, as does its golf club.
The horse was depicted by artist Eric Ravilious (1903–1942) in his watercolour paintings "Train Landscape" and "The Westbury Horse" 1939.


Westfield London is a large shopping centre in White City, west London, England, developed by the Westfield Group at a cost of £1.6bn,
on a brownfield site formerly the home of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition. The site is bounded by the West Cross Route (A3220), the Westway (A40) and Wood Lane (A219). It opened on 30 October 2008 and became the largest covered shopping development in the capital; originally a retail floor area of 1,600,000 sq ft (150,000 m²), further investment and expansion led to it becoming the largest shopping centre in Europe by March 2018, an area of 2,600,000 sq ft (240,000 m²).
The mall is anchored by department stores John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, and House of Fraser, as well as multi brand retailer Next and large fast fashion brand Primark. Former anchor Debenhams closed down in April 2020.


The development is on a large brownfield site, part of which was once the location of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition. The initial site clearance demolished the set of halls still remaining from the exhibition (their cheap-to-build, white-painted blank facades are said to be the origin of the name "White City"). There were also considerable precautions needed during demolition due to the expectation of finding unexploded bombs from raids on a local munitions factory during the World War II blitz.
Elsewhere on the site was a London Underground railway depot, which had to be kept fully operational while a new depot was built underground to allow the new shopping centre to be built above both the new depot, and on the old depot site. The old depot was then demolished.
The initial plan for a shopping centre at this location was developed by a consortium, the largest company involved being the UK division of Australian property company Multiplex. However, due to heavy financial losses in other ventures, including the construction of the new Wembley Stadium, Multiplex was forced to sell its stake to another Australian company (and competitor), Westfield Group.
The development was built by Westfield Construction, the developer's own construction arm and was delivered on schedule. Robert Bird Group were the structural engineers for the job. The roof was designed by Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering (Stuttgart, Germany). The project took five years to build, employing 8,000 people.
On the 7th of July 2015, Mohammed Rehman and Sana Ahmed Khan planned to explode a bomb which consisted of 10 kg of urea nitrate inside the shopping centre. The attack was set to occur on the 10 year anniversary of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, but was thwarted by police.


The centre was opened to the public on 30 October 2008 by Frank Lowy, CEO of Westfield Group, in an event also attended by Mayor Boris Johnson, with a retail floor area of 1,600,000 sq ft (150,000 m²). It became the largest covered shopping centre in London having overtaken the Whitgift Centre in Croydon. Amid great hype, 2 million shoppers visited the centre in its first three weeks, despite the ongoing credit crunch in the UK.
However the financial crisis of the time did cause a swift fall in shoppers and some shops forcing to close in 2009. While some commentators suspected Westfield London to fail during the economic gloom, the centre reported increased sales in 2010 following an unexpectedly large number of tourist shoppers.


On 16 February 2012, Hammersmith and Fulham Council approved a 700,000 sq ft extension to the north of the existing site. Building work began in 2014, and the extension opened in three phases. The first phase opened in March 2018, and the final phase opened in October 2018. Once the extension was completed, Westfield London's size increased to 2.6 million square feet (240,000 m²), making it the largest shopping centre in Europe.
The north side of the extension is bounded by a railway viaduct, and the south side of the extension is adjunct to the original shopping centre. The extension replaces an industrial estate which previously occupied the area, divided by Ariel Way. The extension includes 51,000 square metres (550,000 sq ft) of retail space including a 70,000 sq ft Primark store, offices, new streets, public spaces, and approximately 1,522 new homes. The development ranges from four to twelve storeys high with one building of 20 storeys.
The work also includes modifications to Shepherds Bush Overground Station, relocation of the bus station and reuse of the Dimco Buildings, and pedestrian links on the east side of the site connecting Hammersmith & Fulham with Kensington and Chelsea.
The department store John Lewis is the occupant of an 'anchor store' within the extension. Kidzania, a part of the extension, opened in 2015.


On 28 April 2020 it was announced that Debenhams Westfield London is closed permanently due to the COVID-19 lockdown and entering administration. On 28 July Hammersmith and Fulham Council's Planning Committee announced its approval on Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield's planning application on transforming two-thirds of House of Fraser's space into office spaces and two separate retail units that will face the inside of the centre. Currently the Debenhams space is occupied by Harrods Outlet.
In 2015, a group of Arab terrorists tried to blow up the Westfield London but they were stopped by police. They wanted the bombing to be around the same day as that of the 2005 London attacks anniversary.


It has a retail floor area of 2.6 million square feet (240,000 m²). The centre features around 320 stores, including AllSaints, Apple, Bershka, Boots, Bose, Coast, Cotton On (includes RUBI and Factorie), Dorothy Perkins, Dwell, Early Learning Centre, Ernest Jones, Gerry Weber, Hackett, Hollister Co., House of Fraser, H.Samuel, Jaeger, Kurt Geiger, Lego, Mamas & Papas, Mango, Marks & Spencer, Next, Nomination, Oakley,  Reiss, River Island, schuh, Starbucks Coffee, Tesla, Topshop, Uniqlo, the multiplex cinema Vue, Waitrose and Zara.
The development also includes a high-end retail area called The Village. The area includes brands Burberry, De Beers, Georg Jensen, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Mulberry, Myla, Tiffany & Co and Versace.


Vue opened a seventeen-screen cinema on 12 February 2010, including five 3-D-enabled screens, with a seating capacity of almost 3,000.


As part of the planning permission for the shopping centre, Westfield Group contributed £170m towards local transport improvements, with Transport for London contributing a further £30m. These transport improvements now serve the shopping centre, as well as the surrounding area.
London Underground: Two Underground stations serve the centre - a newly built Wood Lane station (Circle and Hammersmith & City lines) on the western side, and the rebuilt Shepherd's Bush station (Central line) on the southern side. There are also two other stations close by; White City and Shepherd's Bush Market.
London Overground/Southern: Shepherd's Bush railway station is a newly constructed station on the West London Line. The station, which opened on 28 September 2008, is located on the southern side of the Westfield centre, next to the Central line tube station. The opening of the station was delayed by several months when the finished platform was found to be 18 inches narrower than the required width.
Bus and taxi: The Shepherd's Bush Interchange is located to the south of the centre next to the Overground station and includes a bus station and a taxi rank. Close to Wood Lane tube station is the White City bus station on Ariel Way. The red brick, Grade II listed Dimco Buildings, which were originally built in 1898 as an electricity generating station for the Central London Railway, are used to stable buses as the current White City Bus Station. The Dimco buildings were used as a filming location for the ‘Acme Factory’ in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Cycle improvements: The development includes four new cycle routes, as well as 570 cycle parking spaces. However, advocates consider the new cycle routes woefully inadequate.
Road links: A grade-separated junction connects to the West Cross Route (A3220), which runs alongside the development site.


This substantial new development has been criticised. The impact Westfield London will have is not yet fully understood, but it is anticipated that the centre will attract trade that otherwise might have gone to the already busy West End, and may also have a strong negative impact on nearby Kensington High Street.  The development has also pushed up rents in the Shepherds Bush area, which is expected to impact on the value retail offer in the area, with many businesses as well as the Shepherds Bush Market expected to suffer.  Others have criticised the centre's "clone stores".


Westfield Stratford City is a shopping centre in Stratford, east London, which opened on 13 September 2011. With a total retail floor area of 1,910,000 square feet (177,000 m²), it is the largest urban shopping centre in the UK by land area and the 4th-largest shopping centre in the UK by retail space, behind Westfield west London, the MetroCentre, and the Trafford Centre.
Originally fully owned by the Westfield Group, in November 2010 ABP Pension Fund and CPP Investment Board each purchased a 25% shareholding, with Westfield retaining 50%.  Westfield's holding is now owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield following Unibail-Rodamco's acquisition of Westfield Corporation in 2018.
Westfield Stratford City is adjacent to the London Olympic Park, International Quarter London, East Village, Stratford Regional and Stratford International stations. The shopping centre is part of a large multi-purpose development project called Stratford City. It is promoted as contributing significantly to the local economy, with the creation of up to 10,000 permanent jobs including 2,001 going to local people. However, there are counter-reports of significant harm to other local businesses due to the preponderance of chain stores.
The site was formerly occupied by Stratford Works and Locomotive Depot.


The shopping centre is anchored by a 240,000 sq ft (22,000 m²) John Lewis department store, a 32,000 sq ft (3,000 m²) Waitrose supermarket, a 136,000 sq ft (12,600 m²) Marks & Spencer department store, a 24-hour casino (Aspers) and a 20 screen all-digital Vue cinema. The shopping centre also has a 267-room Premier Inn hotel, a Holiday Inn with 350 rooms and Staybridge Suites.
The shopping centre has approximately 280 stores and 70 restaurants.


To the south of the site lies Stratford station which is served by London Underground's Central and Jubilee lines, Greater Anglia, Elizabeth line, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway, and a number of c2c services. To the north lies Stratford International station, which is served by Southeastern High Speed and Docklands Light Railway services.
Stratford bus station and Stratford City bus station are served by numerous London Buses routes and National Express and Terravision long-distance services.
According to Westfield, while the site supports a 5,000 space car park, 80% of the shoppers arrive at the centre on public transport.


In September 2011 Nicole Scherzinger marked the opening of Westfield Stratford City with a performance.
In January 2012, The X Factor singer Olly Murs filmed a music video for his single "Oh My Goodness" at Westfield Stratford City.


Westgate Hall is a hundred-year-old drill hall and community space in a Conservation area of Canterbury, Kent, notable for hosting community events. The Hall was threatened with closure or demolition in 2009, but a group of local people fought to save it and created the venue it is today. The building is now leased by Curzon Cinemas. Westgate Hall now hosts a range of events from parties to conferences, markets and fairs including the Westgate Hall Market.


In 1874 on the site of the present hall there was Welby Square and a large, laid-out garden stretching back to St Peter's Lane where the gardener's cottage remains today. It was called Masters' Exotic Nursery: an exotic garden with two springs giving chalybeate and mineral water and a very tall Lombardy poplar 16 ft (4.9 m) in girth at base. It can be seen on the 1874 map below. The nursery, which stretched northward from Welby Square, belonged to the Masters family and occupied 30 acres (120,000 m²) of land. The gardens were dismantled and sold in 1896, and the last owner of the nursery was George Mount. The square was replaced by Westgate Lane; West Gate Hall and a car park are now on the site of the garden.
1899 maps do not yet show the hall in Welby Square, but a panorama photo taken in 1900 does show it, so the hall was probably built between 1899 and 1900. It is not known for what purpose it was built, but St Peter's Mission Hall is mentioned as being in Welby square in the early days of the hall. It was used as a drill hall for the Territorials during World War I, and survived the 1944 bombing of Canterbury in World War II. It appears in a cityscape photograph taken in 1900. The hall was originally built expensively with a fancy tiled roof and large windows at each end, with a stained-glass panel in the top window at the Westgate Hall Lane end. The Victorian building next door was later knocked through between the wars and the foyer given Art Deco fittings. This building is now in a Conservation area, and a project exists to record all drill halls before they are lost to redevelopment.


The hall was probably the local Rifle Volunteers' meeting place before its winding-up and amalgamation into the Territorial Force in 1908. The hall was the base for B and C Companies, 4th Battalion, the Buffs from its inception as a Territorial battalion in 1908, and they were still there in 1913. It was also the headquarters of the Royal East Kent (The Duke of Connaught's Own) Yeomanry in 1908.
An old photo shows army recruits marching outside the hall in 1915, when it was described as a drill hall. In 1920 the drill hall became the headquarters for the 4th Battalion of the Buffs and by 1921 the Royal East Kent Yeomanry had evolved to become 385 (Duke of Connaught's Own Yeomanry) Battery, Royal Artillery. Residents would see battalions marching through the building from one end to the other. The hall was used as a hospital during the Second World War. A photograph exists of General Bernard Montgomery visiting the hall in 1943, after which the Buffs moved to Leros. It was still referred to as the drill hall between the Second World War and the 1970s. The hall was taken over by the Council in the early 1970s.


It may have been called St Peter's Mission Hall as early as 1903, as there was a hall of that name in Welby Square, but no drill hall is mentioned in trade directories. It was one of the conference halls used by the Mothers’ Union in 1927. Probably during its early years until 1914, and since the early 1970s, it has been a community centre. Along with the Beehive, the hall was the background to the beginning of the current Canterbury music scene. The first regular music group to play here was the Wilde Flowers.
It is now a dance hall with sprung floor used by the people of Canterbury and by students from the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University. It has a bar open eleven hours a week, is used for events and fairs, for ballroom dancing and as a conference venue, and accommodates hundreds of people. Local clubs and societies use the hall. The University of Kent uses the hall for the collection of robes on graduation days. This is also a venue for serious events such as Holocaust Memorial Day. The Council itself uses the Westgate Hall to count votes, and sports events such as 2007 Tour de France finish stages at the hall. Blood donor sessions are held here, besides Weight Watchers, gigs and wedding receptions. National Childbirth Trust hold their nearly-new sales in the hall twice a year.


The hall was under threat of closure or demolition as of 2009, pending a decision by Canterbury City Council on that day. This caused widespread controversy and a pressure group was formed to ensure survival of the hall. In the event the Council voted in favour of this proposal, however the Westgate Community Trust worked with the local community to save the hall. The Westgate Community Trust reported that the Council confirmed that the hall would remain open until June 2011. In July 2011, the Council prepared to discuss plans by the Westgate Community Trust and the Corinthian Curzon cinema company to lease the hall for the benefit of the community. In the event, on 27 July, the Council approved use by Curzon Cinema and voted to grant a 100-year lease to the Trust, subject to conditions.


In February 2014, City of Canterbury council, Curzon Cinemas and the Westgate Community Trust signed a 99-year lease transferring the Hall to the Trust, and the building was scheduled to re-open in November 2014. The Department for Communities and Local Government community assets fund awarded a grant of £344,497 to the Trust. As of January 2014 the building was closed for renovation as a cinema with a hall for community use. The hall is now open for local events, including parties, conferences, markets and fairs including the Westgate Hall Market.


WikiWeb_Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History_0

The Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History (LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte)
is an arts and cultural museum in Münster, Germany Besides an extensive collection ranging from spätgotik painting and sculpture to the Cranachs, the museum specializes in paintings from the Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke movements, in particular works by August Macke.


Wewelsburg ([ˈveːvl̩sbʊɐ̯k]) is a Renaissance castle located in the village of Wewelsburg, which is a district of the town of Büren, Westphalia, in the Landkreis of Paderborn in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The castle has a triangular layout, with three round towers connected by massive walls. After 1934 it was used by the SS under Heinrich Himmler, and was to be expanded into a complex which would serve as the central SS cult-site.
After 1941, plans were developed to enlarge it to be the so-called "Centre of the World". In 1950, the castle reopened as a museum and youth hostel. (The youth hostel is one of the largest in Germany.) The castle today hosts the Historical Museum of the Prince Bishopric of Paderborn and the Wewelsburg 1933–1945 Memorial Museum.


Predecessor buildings existed. One of these, the Wifilisburg, was defended during the 9th and 10th centuries against the Hungarians.
Count Friedrich (Arnsberg) built another predecessor fortification. In 1123/24, after his death, peasants whom he had oppressed demolished the building. In 1301, the Count of Waldeck sold the Wewelsburg to the Prince-Bishop of Paderborn.
A document concerning this acquisition indicates that two fortresslike buildings stood on the hill, the Bürensches Haus and the Waldecksches Haus.


From 1301 to 1589, the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn assigned the estate to various liege lords.
The masonry of both predecessor buildings was integrated in the current triangular Renaissance castle. In its current form, the Wewelsburg was built from 1603 to 1609 as secondary residence for the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn, at that time Dietrich von Fürstenberg. Its location is near what was then believed to be the site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest of 9 CE.
The Wewelsburg was taken several times during the Thirty Years' War. In 1646 it was occupied and then razed by Swedish troops, by the army commanded by General Carl Gustav Wrangel. After 1650, the mostly destroyed castle was rebuilt by Prince-Bishop Theodor Adolf von der Recke and his successor Ferdinand von Fürstenberg. He carried out some architectural changes; the three towers of the castle got their baroque domes.
From 1589 to 1821, the castle was the place of residence of a bursary officer (or steward). Two witch trials took place in the Wewelsburg in 1631 (a former inquisition room is placed in the basement next to the east tower).
During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the basement rooms were probably used as a military prison.


During the 18th and 19th centuries, the castle fell progressively into ruin. In 1802, during German mediatisation the castle came into the possession of the Prussian state. On 11 January 1815, the North Tower was gutted by a fire that was started by a lightning strike; only the outer walls remained. From 1832 to 1934, a rectory existed in the eastern part of the south wing of the castle.


In 1924, the castle became the property of the district of Büren and was changed into a cultural center. By 1925, the castle had been renovated into a local museum, banquet hall, restaurant and youth hostel.
At the end of the Twenties, the North Tower again proved to be the weak point of the architecture, and had to be supported by guy wires in winter 1932/33; the preservation of the castle was supported by the "Club for the preservation of the Wewelsburg" (Verein zur Erhaltung der Wewelsburg). After 1925, the renovation activities decreased.


In 1932, the local head of the district authority (Landrat) ordered about seventy members of the Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst (FAD), (voluntary labour service), to be housed at the Wewelsburg. They were unemployed and supported by the state as Notstandsarbeiter (literally: "crisis workers"). Through the rent, the district of Büren thus hoped to recoup some of the running costs of the castle. However, in early 1933, negotiations to set up a full-sized camp for 214 FAD participants failed.
Prior to the Nazi party taking power, Heinrich Himmler, as leader of the SS, had decided that the organization should have a retreat at a castle  "in the heartland of Hermann der Cherusker" (Armin the Cheruscian). Initially Himmler showed an interest in Burg Schwalenberg but negotiations failed in early 1933; he then visited Wewelsburg, at the suggestion of a local Nazi leader,  von Oeynhausen.
Himmler decided to buy or lease the castle on his first visit on 3 November 1933. His architect, Hermann Bartels was able to draw on existing plans for the FAD camp, for the now envisaged Reichsführerschule SS (SS Leadership School). This school was mainly intended to ensure a unified ideological training of the SS leadership and would be run by the Rasseamt of the SS.
Negotiations were difficult, however, since the Landrat of Büren was unwilling to give up control of the castle. In the first half of 1934, a 100-year lease was agreed for the symbolic annual rent of ℛℳ 1. Initial work on the school by the FAD had started in January 1934. That August, Manfred von Knobelsdorf, a brother-in-law of Walther Darré and former professional soldier, moved in with his family as Burghauptmann. Himmler officially took over the Wewelsburg in a large ceremony on 22 September 1934. The Völkischer Beobachter, in reporting on the event, while mentioning the Germanic and historic past of the region, emphasized the educational aspects.
In 1935, Himmler announced that the SS-castle was to be officially called "SS-Schule Haus Wewelsburg" ("SS School, House Wewelsburg"). The focus of the school was to become: "Germanische Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Volkstumskunde u. a. als Rüstzeug zur weltanschaulich-politischen Schulung" (i.e. "Germanic pre- and early history, folklore studies, etc. as an equipment for ideological-political training"). Knobelsdorff envisioned a kind of Nordic academy.
There is some speculation that it was Karl Maria Wiligut who convinced Himmler to use the castle not only as a school but also as a cult site; Wiligut allegedly was inspired by the old Westphalian legend of the "Battle at the Birch Tree" (Schlacht am Birkenbaum). The saga tells about a future "last battle at the birch tree", in which a "huge army from the East" is beaten decisively by the "West". During 1935, Wiligut reportedly predicted to Himmler that the Wewelsburg would be the "bastion". Himmler expected a big conflict between Asia and Europe.


Knobelsdorf led the "SS School, House Wewelsburg". But very quickly the focus of activity shifted away from schooling the SS leadership in a broad set of ideological fields to something much narrower. In fact, work concentrated more on conducting basic pseudo-scientific research in the fields of Germanic pre- and early history, medieval history, folklore and genealogy (Sippenforschung), all intended to provide the underpinnings for the racial teachings of the SS. A scientific library was established. But even the first plans by Bartels from early 1934 did not show any large-scale class rooms, only smaller cell-like rooms for individual study. Among those active at the Wewelsburg was Wilhelm Teudt.


Wewelsburg castle was also a centre for archaeological excavations in the region. Fields of activity included study of prehistory and ancient history (directed by Wilhelm Jordan, who led excavations in the region), study of medieval history and folklife (directed by Karlernst Lasch from March 1935), build-up of the "Library of the Schutzstaffel in Wewelsburg" (directed by Dr. Hans Peter des Coudres), and strengthening the National Socialist worldview in the village of Wewelsburg (directed by Walter Franzius).
This latter activity included such work as renovation of a timbered house in the center of the village of Wewelsburg – the "Ottens Hof" – between 1935 and 1937 for use as a village community center. Franzius also undertook various other architectural tasks.


The castle crew consisted of members of all SS branches, the "General SS" ("Allgemeine SS"), the police and the "Armed SS" ("Waffen SS"). Also working at the castle were proponents of a kind of SS esotericism consisting of Germanic mysticism, an ancestor cult, worship of runes, and racial doctrines. Himmler, for example, adapted the idea of the Grail to create a heathen mystery for the SS.


No proof exists that Himmler wanted a Grail castle, but redesign of the castle by the SS referred to certain characters in the legends of the Grail: for example, one of the arranged study rooms was named Gral ("Grail"), and others, König Artus ("King Arthur"), König Heinrich ("King Henry", referring to Henry the Fowler to whom Himmler claimed a connection), Heinrich der Löwe ("Henry the Lion"), Widukind, Christoph Kolumbus ("Christopher Columbus"), Arier ("Aryan"), Jahrlauf ("course of the seasons"), Runen ("runes"), Westfalen ("Westphalia"), Deutscher Orden ("Teutonic Order"), Reichsführerzimmer ("Room of the Empire's Leader(s)"; "Reichsführer-SS", or "the Reich's Leader of the SS" was Himmler's title), Fridericus (probably in reference to Frederick II of Prussia), tolle Christian ("Christian the Great", probably referring to Christian the Younger of Brunswick, Bishop of Halberstadt), and Deutsche Sprache ("German language"). In addition to these study rooms, the SS created guest rooms, a dining room, an auditorium, a canteen kitchen, and a photographic laboratory with an archive.
Oak was used to panel and furnish these rooms, though (according to contemporary witnesses) only sparingly. All interior decoration was shaped by an SS sensibility in art and culture; the preferred elements of design were based on runes, swastikas, and Germanically interpreted Sinnzeichen (sense characters). Tableware, decorated with runes and Germanic symbols of salvation, was manufactured specifically for Wewelsburg castle, and Himmler's private collection of weapons was housed in the castle.
From 1939, the castle was also furnished with miscellaneous objects of art, including prehistoric objects (chiefly arranged by the teaching and research group Das Ahnenerbe), objects of past historical eras, and works of contemporary sculptors and painters (mainly works by such artists as Karl Diebitsch, Wolfgang Willrich, and Hans Lohbeck – that is, art in line with the aesthetics of National Socialism).
In 1934, the eastern castle bridge was built and the castle moat lowered. The exterior plaster was removed to make the building look more castle-like. The following year, a smithy was established on the ground floor of the North Tower for manufacture of the wrought-iron interior decoration of the castle. The western and southern wings of the castle were rebuilt between 1934 and 1938; the eastern, between 1936 and 1938. The first new building, the guardhouse (Wachgebäude), was constructed next to the castle in 1937. An SS sentry post and a small circular location (Rondell) were placed next to the guardhouse, as was a no longer extant SS staff building (SS-Stabsgebäude). The North Tower was strengthened and rebuilt between 1938 and 1943.


The first commandant of the castle (Burghauptmann von Wewelsburg), from August 1934, was Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Manfred von Knobelsdorff. He was partial to Karl Maria Wiligut's religious theories. The opinion of other SS-scientists about Wiligut were absolutely negative. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Knobelsdorff was succeeded by Siegfried Taubert on 30 January 1938. Because Taubert was consigned to various other tasks he was absent from the castle for longer periods.


So-called "SS-marriage-consecrations" (SS-Eheweihen) took place at the castle.
Since 1936, Himmler (who was often present at the castle) wanted more and more to expand the Wewelsburg to be a representative and ideological center of the SS Order. Consequently, although at first planned to be an educational training center, during the 1930s increasing measures were taken to transform the castle into an isolated central meeting place for the highest ranking SS-officers.


For financing the project, Himmler founded in 1936 the "Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege deutscher Kulturdenkmäler e.V." (Association for the advancement and maintenance of German cultural relics (registered association)) and assigned the association as building developer. In contrast to the SS, the association was allowed to receive donations and loans. Until 1943, the project cost 15 million ℛℳ.


On 6 November 1935, Himmler forbade visiting the castle without express permission. In 1939, he further forbade publishing anything about the castle.


After the Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst (the "FAD", "Voluntary Labour Service") ceased work on Wewelsburg, the Reichsarbeitsdienst (the "RAD", "Reich Labour Service") carried out modifications to the castle; but in 1938, the RAD was relocated to the "Westwall" (Siegfried Line). Between 1939 and 1943, prisoners from the Sachsenhausen and Niederhagen concentration camps were used as labourers to perform much of the construction work on Wewelsburg, under the design of architect Hermann Bartels. However, by a decree of 13 January 1943, all building projects which were unimportant for the war – including the Wewelsburg – had to be stopped.
In 1938, after Reichskristallnacht, 17 Jews from Salzkotten, ten kilometers (about six miles) distant, were held in the dungeon of the Wewelsburg before transportation to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the middle of the 1930s, Himmler had a private safe mounted in the basement of the west tower. Only the commandant of the castle knew about it. The whereabouts of its content after the Second World War is unclear.


Swearing-in ceremonies were planned at the castle. Meetings of SS-Gruppenführer (equivalent to lieutenant-generals) at so called "spring conferences" were planned since 1939. Some talks probably took place at Wewelsburg Castle; the only documented Gruppenführers' meeting was held from 12 to 15 June 1941 – one week before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. The highest ranking SS-officers, who planned the SS operation in the Soviet Union or who were intended to be used for the operation, were called up by Himmler. Concrete decisions were not made. The meeting's purpose was the ideological preparation of the attendant SS leaders for the campaign.
Another source mentions three or four ceremonies a year of SS leaders which took place at the castle.
Towards the end of the war Himmler ordered that Wewelsburg castle should become the Reichshaus der SS-Gruppenführer (Reich-House of the SS-Gruppenführer).


Himmler's plans included making it the "center of the new world" ("Zentrum der neuen Welt") following the "final victory". The monumental estate was never realized; only detailed plans and models exist. The installation of a 15 to 18-meter-high wall in the shape of a three-quarter circle with 18 towers including the actual castle area centred on the North Tower of the castle, 860 m in diameter, was planned. The real purpose of the project was never clearly defined. Inside of this castle area buildings were planned for the exclusive purposes of the Reichsführung-SS (Reich Leadership-SS).
The main road of an SS village was also to be centred on the North Tower of the castle with a diameter of 1270 m. This road was to be connected with three radial roads and gates with the castle area. The residential area was to be placed in the northwest, the centre of the village in the north, and the SS-barracks in the west of the castle area; between the barracks and village a villa colony for higher SS-leaders; in the southwest farmsteads.
In the architectural plans from 1941, the estate had the shape of a spear pointing towards the north; the 2 km long access avenue with four tree rows road looks like a spear shaft with an access to the Rhynern – Kassel Reichsautobahn (freeway) to the south. The plan from 1944 shows the castle as the top of a triangular estate surrounded by further buildings. The plans also included a "Hall of the High Court of the SS" (Saal des Hohen Gerichtes der SS), streets, parkways, magnificent buildings, a dam with a power plant, freeway accesses and an airport. From 1941 on (after Hitler's successful military campaigns against Poland and France) the architects called the complex the "Center of the World". It was to be finished within twenty years. The complex was to be a center of the "species-appropriate religion" (artgemäße Religion) and a representative estate for the SS-Führerkorps (SS leader corps). If the plans had been realized, the entire village of Wewelsburg and adjacent villages would have disappeared. The population was to be resettled. The valley was to be flooded. 250 million Reichsmark were budgeted for the estate.


Inside the North Tower two mythologic designed rooms were created (1938–1943):
The Obergruppenführersaal (SS Generals' Hall) and the Gruft (vault). Their ceilings were cast in concrete and faced with natural stone. On the upper floors a further hall was planned. The axis of this tower was to be the actual "Center of the World" (Mittelpunkt der Welt). A preparation for an eternal flame in the vault, a swastika ornament in its zenith, and the so-called "Black Sun" symbol embedded in the floor of the "Obergruppenführersaal" lie on this axis. Although both rooms appear to have a ceremonial purpose, nothing is known about if, or how, the rooms were ever used.
Where a primary cistern was originally located, a vault after the model of Mycenaean domed tombs was hewn into the rock, possibly to serve as some kind of commemoration of the dead. The room is unfinished. The floor was lowered 4.80 meters. The foundation of the tower was firmed with concrete, and a gas pipe leading to the centre was embedded, suggesting that an eternal flame was probably planned for the centre of this space. Twelve pedestals were placed around the perimeter, each with a wall niche above it; the purpose is unknown.
On the ground floor the "Obergruppenführersaal" (literally translated: Upper-Group-Leaders-Hall, referring to the original twelve highest ranking SS-generals, called Obergruppenführer), a hall with twelve columns joined by a groined vault, twelve window- and door-niches and eight longitudinal windows was created. The room was almost finished; the rebuilding work stopped in 1943. Assumedly it was to serve as a representative hall for the SS-Obergruppenführer. In the centre of the marbled whitish/grayish floor a dark green sun wheel (Sonnenrad) is embedded. The axis of the sun wheel consisted of a circular plate of pure gold, which was to symbolize the center of the castle and thus the entire "Germanic world empire".
Since the 1990s the ornament has been called the "Black Sun" occasionally. It is not known if the SS had a special name for the ornament nor if they attributed a special meaning to it. Possibly the sun wheel had a relation to the Germanic light- and sun-mysticism which was propagated by the SS. Today it is used as a symbol in Neo-Nazism and in a variety of subcultures. However, the ornament has only been linked to the esoteric neo-Nazi concept of the Black Sun after 1991. The Latin inscription above the entrance "Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur" ("My house shall be called a house of prayer") reminds of the prince-episcopalian chapel which was originally located on the ground floor of the tower.
The upper floors were to be completed as a multi-storied hall with a big dome. It was to be a prestigious meeting hall for the entire corps of the SS-Gruppenführer. This room was only planned. In order to realize the hall the upper half of the tower was dismantled in winter 1941/42.


When the "final victory" failed to materialize, the castle commander (or Burghauptmann), SS General Siegfried Taubert, fled on 30 March 1945 as the U.S. 3rd Armored Division closed in on the Paderborn area in the final phases of the war. Meanwhile, at his headquarters in Brenzlau, Himmler ordered adjutant SS Major Heinz Macher, with 15 of his men, to destroy the Wewelsburg. This took place on Saturday 31 March only three days before the 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Armored Division seized the grounds after reports from a nearby Bürgermeister that "SS men had set fire to their barracks in the castle, changed into civilian clothes and fled."
Because Macher's company ran out of explosives, they placed tank mines only in the unimportant southeast tower, the guard-building and the SS-cadre-building which was completely destroyed. The castle was set on fire and – according to information of the village citizens – the castle was open to looting.


Heinrich Himmler: Aegis
Erich Schupping: Commandant
Siegfried Taubert: Commandant
Karl Elstermann von Elster Stabsführer: replaced by Paul Hübner
Walter Muller: Hauptsturmführer
Josef Schneid: Hauptsturmführer also known as Pepi
Walter Franzius: architect brought on board in October 1935
Karl Lasch
Dr Hans-Peter de Courdes: until May 1939
Dr Bernhard Frank: SS Commander of the Obersalzberg
Dr Heinrich Hagel (physician): Obersturmbannführer
Wilhelm Jordan
Elfriede Wippermann


According to rumours the Death's Head Rings were to be buried in the vault. The vault, allegedly dubbed the "Himmler Crypt", was (allegedly) dedicated to Heinrich I, founder and first king of the medieval German state (see East Francia), of whom Himmler reportedly believed himself to be the reincarnation and where he hoped to be interred after his death. This assertion is unproven. In Himmlers's opinion Heinrich I protected Germany from invaders from the "East", as popularized in Richard Wagner's Lohengrin opera.
Leading representatives of the Third Reich were fascinated by the story of the "Holy Grail". Hitler admired Richard Wagner's operas Lohengrin and Parsifal. Hitler himself never visited the castle.
Himmler reportedly imagined the castle as a focus for the rebirth of the Knights of the Round Table and appointed twelve SS officers as his followers, who would gather at various rooms throughout the castle and perform unknown neo-Paganistic and possibly neo-Gnostic rites. The SS had twelve main departments (SS-Hauptämter) with twelve leaders. The number twelve plays a major role in the design of the North Tower: twelve pedestals in the vault, twelve pillars and niches in the "Obergruppenführersaal", and twelve spokes of the sun wheel. In the study on ancient sense characters during the Third Reich, the sun in general was interpreted as "the strongest and most visible expression of God", the number twelve as documented for "the things of the target and the completion". With reference to the number 12 in their studies on Germanic mythology a relation was drawn to "the twelve Æsir of divine kind who have (according to the Edda) twelve domiciles and twelve stallions" and to the "twelve rivers which flow from the fountain Hwergelmir in Niflheim".
Quote of former SS-General Karl Wolff referring to the Obergruppenführersaal: "This was a part of the myth which was to be introduced here. These are the twelve compartments(*), they were created according to mystic-confused things with which Himmler liked to play, of the Round Table of King Arthur. In fact we were twelve main department leaders (Hauptamtchefs) who represented equally next to each other their service areas because Himmler didn't have the courage to appoint a Deputy-Reichsführer-SS or a Deputy Chief of the German police."
(* German original sound record: "Postamente": this could refer to the twelve columns; there is also speculation about twelve heraldic emblems for the twelve leading SS Generals which were to be placed inside the hall.)
Allegedly the "Obergruppenführersaal" has similarities with the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna
When one of the officers died, his ashes would be interred in the castle. There is speculation that the urns of dead SS leaders would have been placed on the pedestals in the vault. The vault is also named "consecration-hall" (Weihehalle).
The exact meaning of the vault is unknown. Nevertheless, the room is significant for the quasi-religious aspects of National Socialism – especially the ancestral cult. A possible interpretation of the symbolic character of the eternal flame in general according to solemn beliefs which had established during the NS-era especially in SS circles: in the fire they wanted to feel the soul of ancestors. The symbol of the eternal flame stood for the aspiration of the ancestral soul from which man arises at his birth and which he reenters at his death. Consecration-sites and -events suggested the immortality of the people's soul. By sacral-architecture and spectacular mass-events the subconsciousness of the masses was influenced by pseudo-religious ideas. The two cult rooms inside the North Tower were built to deepen the own "mission".
In 1938, Siegfried Taubert was in charge of developing the castle, when Himmler inquired about the cost of installing a planetarium. To round off the subjects taught at the Wewelsburg SS school a teacher was sought who should draw cross-connections between astronomy and history and the folklife of the ancestors so that the historical and ideological schooling was to be enhanced and deepened by the "cosmic view" (kosmische Schau).
According to the writer J. von Helsing, the recovered unknown flying object that crashed in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) near Freiburg in 1936 was taken to the Wewelsburg castle, where a reverse engineering project was launched, reportedly leading to the construction of several very advanced flying machines towards the end of the World War II. This subject is often featured in popular culture and science fiction; The History Channel series Ancient Aliens features the Freiburg disc crash in their episode "Alien and the Third Reich" (Season 2, episode 5).


Just offsite of Wewelsburg was the smallest German KZ, Niederhagen prison and labour camp. Begun on June 17, 1940, the camp was completed the following year and named after Niederhagen Forest, the name Himmler had given to the forest outside the castle several years earlier.
It began with 480 prisoners from Sachsenhausen, and grew to 1200, consisting chiefly of Soviet POWs and captured foreign labourers shipped to Germany, although early in its life it was also a gathering point for Jehovah's Witness prisoners. Correspondingly, a large percentage of the concentration camp inmates at Niederhagen who were working on the Wewelsburg Castle were indeed Jehovah's Witnesses, perhaps the only place where they constituted the core KZ population.  During the SS's December 1942 Korherr Report it was reported to have only housed 12 Jews, all of whom had died.
Of the 3900 prisoners held during the camp's existence, 1285 died of typhus and 56 were formally executed. In August 1942, the Allies began deciphering death tolls transmitted from the camps; Niederhagen had reported 21 deaths for that month. The camp was dissolved in 1943 with most of the prisoners resettled in Buchenwald, though several dozen prisoners remained behind, housed directly in Wewelsburg.
Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas, who had overseen the camp from its beginning, was transferred to a command position at Bergen-Belsen, while Schutzhaftlagerführer Wolfgang Plaul was transferred to Buchenwald. Untersturmführer Hermann Michl had last been recorded at the camp in 1942, and later appeared at the Riga ghetto.


In 1948/49, the castle was restored. On 29 June 1950, the castle was reopened as a museum and youth hostel, while the Niederhagen kitchen had been renovated into a village fire station.
In 1973, a two-year project was begun to restore the North Tower. Due to a local government reform the Wewelsburg became property of the district of Paderborn in 1975.
By 1977, it had been decided to restore the entire site as a war monument. It opened on 20 March 1982 under the name Wewelsburg 1933-1945: Kult- und Terrorstätte der SS in the former SS guard house in the castle forecourt. Several Niederhagen camp survivors were present.
In 1996, the Historical Museum of the Bishopric of Paderborn (Historisches Museum des Hochstifts Paderborn) opened in the east- and south-wings. The museum documents the history of the "Hochstift Paderborn" (Bishopric of Paderborn) which was one of territories of the Holy Roman Empire. In 2010, the museum's contemporary history department was reopened as "Wewelsburg 1933–1945 Memorial Museum". The new permanent exhibition "Ideology and terror of the SS" now presents the history of the Schutzstaffel's activities in Wewelsburg within the broader context of the SS as a whole.
In 2000, a memorial was built in honour of the deceased Niederhagen prisoners; four years later, the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg was granted DM 29,400 for restoring and moving the remnants of the Niederhagen camp, as well as producing an educational film on the Ukrainian and Russian prisoners who were housed there. In 2006 and 2007, it hosted the annual Internacia Seminario, a meeting of Esperanto youth.
The Youth hostel Wewelsburg, with 218 beds, is located in the west wing of the castle. The Historical Museum of the Prince Bishopric of Paderborn is located in the south and east wings.
In 2010, a museum about the Nazi use of the castle opened. A news item stated that the exhibition "dubbed the world's first dedicated entirely to the dreaded Schutzstaffel, charts its growth from Hitler's elite guard to a band of a million men who committed unspeakable crimes across Europe. A discussion of tours of the castle on the Expedia web site in 2020 included this information: "...head to the former guardhouse in the forecourt for the Wewelsburg 1933-1945 Memorial Museum. Browse the free and fascinating exhibit Ideology and Terror of the SS". A fee applied to tour the castle, however. The Kreismuseum Wewelsburg web site stated that the exhibition "utilises a comprehensive media concept as well as classical image and text elements. Many qualitative, original exhibits such as Heinrich Himmler’s pocket calendar, concentration camp barrack walls and prisoners’ clothing are on display".


The castle and SS school are the setting for the climactic scene of Philip Kerr's novel The Pale Criminal (1990).
The castle, its SS and occult connections, are possibly the inspiration for the video game series Wolfenstein and the titular castle therein. Specifically the 2001 release, Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
The castle is mentioned in Tova Reich's satirical novel My Holocaust: A Novel (2008).
The comic title Green Lantern Annual No. 3 (1994) includes the story "Rings of Evil", set in an alternate universe wherein the SS rose to world domination. This victory was made possible by Himmler's magic practice within Castle Wewelsburg.
The attempted destruction of the castle in 1945 forms the dénouement of Duncan Kyle's 1978 novel Black Camelot.
The castle appears in Jack Higgins's 1991 novel The Eagle Has Flown as a location for several encounters between Walter Schellenberg and Heinrich Himmler.
The castle was featured in a mission in the popular PlayStation videogame Medal of Honor: Underground making it possibly the first time a video game featured a concentration camp as a setting, as the castle was used for this purpose during WWII. This was a full 17 years before Call of Duty: WWII (2017) featured a concentration camp.
The castle is one of the locations visited in the videogame Lost
Horizon.
The castle appears in W. E. B. Griffin's 2017 novel Death at Nuremberg and his 2018 novel The Enemy of My Enemy.
The castle is mentioned in Jodi Picoult's 2013 novel The Storyteller.
The castle is one of the locations in James Rollins's novel Black Order.
The castle features in Graeme Shimmin's 2014 alternate history/sci-fi thriller A Kill in the Morning.


"Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult- and terror place of the SS" (PDF). lwl.org. p. 214.
James Bjorkman, "Heinrich Himmler: Hitler's Executioner," World War II in Pictures, Retrieved 5 January 2019.
History of Wewelsburg Castle
Kreismuseum Wewelsburg
The Wewelsburg (History of the castle – in German)
Hüser, Karl; Brebeck, Wulff E. (2002). Wewelsburg 1933-1945, Kultstätte des SS-Ordens. Einführung (German). Münster.
"Kirsten John-Stucke: 22 September 1934 – Takeover of the Wewelsburg by Heinrich Himmler(German)". Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. 25 March 2014. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
 Extract from Mythos Wewelsburg - facts and legends, page 20 (in German).
"Letter from Oberscharführer Lasch to Otto Sigfrid Reuter of 14 October 1935(German)". Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. 25 March 2014. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
Karl Maria Wiligut (in German)
"Manfred von Knobelsdorff (German)". Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. 25 March 2014. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
Country inn Ottens Hof – History (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" p. 248-249 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" p. 212 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" p. 278 (in German)
Frischauer, Willi (1953). Himmler, the Evil Genius of the Third Reich. Odhams. (pages 85-88)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" pp. 218, 224, 225, 226 and 277 (in German)
Karl Höffkes, Stuart Russell: Die Wewelsburg – Das weltanschauliche Zentrum der SS
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" pp. 225–29 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" p. 223 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult and terror place of the SS" p. 225 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult- and terror place of the SS" pp. 281 and 243 (in German)
Historical background Archived 2010-07-04 at the Wayback Machine (in German)
 Extract from Mythos Wewelsburg - facts and legends, p. 20 (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult- and terror place of the SS" pp. 222–23 (in German)
Wewelsburg – Overview Archived 2007-03-11 at the Wayback Machine (in German)
History of the Jewish population of Salzkotten (in German).
Nicholas Goodrick Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzen des Nationalsozialismus (The Occult Roots of Nazism), p. 197
"Wewelsburg – Historischer Hintergrund". Archived from the original on 2010-07-04. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
Nicholas Goodrick Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzen des Nationalsozialismus (The occult roots of national socialism), p. 163
Grossly exaggerated architect's plans for the Order Castle Wewelsburg (in German)
See architectural drawing.
DVD Schwarze Sonne
Julian Strube: Die Erfindung es esoterischen Nationalsozialismus im Zeichen der Schwarzen Sonne. In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 20(2), 2012: pp. 223–268.
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult- and terror place of the SS" p. 197
Wewelsburg: SS-cult and KZ-terror (in German)
60 years end of war – Wewelsburg: SS-cult und KZ-terror (in German)
Frischauer, Willi (1953). Himmler, the Evil Genius of the Third Reich. London: Odhams. pp. 85–88.
Kersten, Felix (1957). The Kersten Memoirs: 1940–1945. New York: Macmillan. p. 238.
DVD Schwarze Sonne
"Hitler and Wagner". The Telegraph. 25 Jul 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Blachetta, Walther (1941). Das Buch der deutschen Sinnzeichen (The book of German sense characters). pp. 15/16: interpretation of the sun and, p. 80: interpretation of the number twelve.
Blachetta, Walther (1941). Das Buch der deutschen Sinnzeichen (The book of German sense characters). p. 80: interpretation of the number twelve.
"History of the castle". Wewelsburg-alte-mehle.de. (In German)
DVD Schwarze Sonne, bonus material, interview
IVM.org
Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, trans. William Templer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 122.
NS-archive.de
The concentration camp Niederhagen (in German)
Documentation "Wewelsburg 1933–1945. Cult- and terror place of the SS" p. 196
Youth Hostels
Kreismuseum Wewelsburg
Nazi castle turned into museum dedicated to Hitler's dreaded SS 15 April 2020
The permanent exhibition deology and Terror of the SS
"Return to Castle Wolfenstein", Wikipedia, 2021-09-13, retrieved 2021-11-15
Tova Reich (1 April 2008). My Holocaust: A Novel. Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0061173479.
DeVries, David M.; Zachary, Dean; Pepoy, Andrew (1994). "Rings of Evil". Green Lantern Annual. New York: DC Comics (3).
Graeme Shimmin's web page for the book


Weymouth Beach is a gently curving arc of sand in Weymouth Bay, beside the town of Weymouth in Dorset, England.  Immediately adjacent to the beach is The Esplanade.
The beach is a popular destination for sea bathing, and was frequented by King George III during times of illness. The king named Weymouth his 'first resort' and made bathing fashionable there.  George III was advised to take the waters after his first bout of porphyria.
The sand on Weymouth beach was voted the best for making sandcastle and you can visit Sandworld, which features fantastic sculptures made from sand.
Weymouth Beach is very wide and gently sloping, with golden sand and shallow waters normally with small waves.  In addition to bathing, the expansive beach is used for beach motocross and volleyball.
The beach has the traditional attractions of an English seaside resort, including (during the summer season)  donkey rides, Punch and Judy, sand sculptures, trampolines and a small funfair for children.
At the southern end is Weymouth Pier, including the Pavilion Theatre and Weymouth Sea Life Tower. At the northeastern end is the suburb of Greenhill, with Furzy Cliff and Bowleaze Cove beyond that.


The Wheeling Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the main channel of the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia.  It was the largest suspension bridge in the world from 1849 until 1851. Charles Ellet Jr. (who also worked on the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge) designed it and supervised construction of what became the first bridge to span a major river west of the Appalachian mountains. It linked the eastern and western section of the National Road, and became especially strategically important during the American Civil War. Litigation in the United States Supreme Court concerning its obstruction of the new high steamboat smokestacks eventually cleared the way for other bridges, especially needed by expanding railroads. Because this bridge was designed during the horse-and-buggy era, 2-ton weight limits and vehicle separation requirements applied in later years until it was closed to automobile traffic in September 2019.
The main span is 1,010 feet (310 m) from tower to tower. The east tower rests on the Wheeling shore, while the west tower is on Wheeling Island. The east tower is 153.5 feet (46.8 m) above the low-water level of the river, or 82 feet (25 m) from the base of the masonry. The west tower is 132.75 feet (40.46 m) above low water, with 69 feet (21 m) of masonry. Detailed analysis of the bridge was conducted by Dr. Emory Kemp.
The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 15, 1975.  It is located in the Wheeling Island Historic District.


Since 1820 Congress had spent much money to clear navigation obstacles from the Ohio River, which flows from Pittsburgh down through Wheeling (then in Virginia) to Cincinnati, Ohio and eventually reaches the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois slightly downstream of St. Louis, Missouri (which became a major inland commercial center). Goods and produce could thus ship fairly cheaply and quickly down the Ohio River and reach the ocean port of New Orleans, Louisiana. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky had become a great proponent of internal improvements, in part because the Ohio River drained into the northern part of his state and contributed to the growth of Louisville (as did the Louisville and Portland Canal completed in 1830 to bypass the Ohio River's only major rapids). Both road and navigation improvements helped bring manufactured goods and people to Kentucky, western Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, etc., and as well as allowed produce and natural resources to reach eastern, southern and even international markets. However, President Andrew Jackson had a much stingier view of internal improvements than Senator Clay, preferring to leave their construction to private or individual state interests, if at all.
Meanwhile, ferrying the U.S. mail, as well as passengers and goods across the Ohio river at Wheeling to connect the two sections of the National Road proved cumbersome and expensive. Maintaining the (initially free) National Road also cost money, especially after floods in 1832 left debris, as well as destroyed shore facilities. In 1835 Congress (dominated by Jacksonian Democrats) gave existing sections to the adjoining states, in order to pass on those maintenance costs. In the interim, new steamboat technology helped goods move upstream as well as downstream, and both railroad and bridge technology had also evolved. Nonetheless, navigation on the Ohio River between Wheeling and Pittsburgh remained hazardous at certain times of year (because of ice and debris in winter and spring floods, as well as summer low water).
Pittsburgh and Wheeling both competed to become commercial hubs connecting east and west across the central Appalachian mountains. To the north, the Erie Canal (completed 1825 between Buffalo, New York on Lake Erie and Albany, New York on the Hudson River) and the Welland Canal (completed 1829 connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario bypassing Niagara Falls and creating the St. Lawrence Seaway) proved a commercial boon even to cities some distance away (especially New York City as a seaport, but also Erie, Pennsylvania). Soon, Pennsylvania competed by subsidizing first a short canal ending at Pittsburgh, then railroads connecting Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, which had rail and water connections to New York City and was a major international port in its own right. In 1835, a new incline railroad connected Pittsburgh to Ohio valley produce and goods. The combination of Pennsylvania railroads and canals became known as the "Main Line". In 1846 Pennsylvania's legislature chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad to connect its state capital Harrisburg (which had many connections to Philadelphia) with Pittsburgh. While transappalachian commerce initially boomed in part because canals enabled one man, one boy, a horse and a boat to transport what had previously involved ten men, ten wagons and sixty horses (and the Pennsylvania route was shorter route for most Ohio valley goods and produce than the New York routes), toll revenues proved insufficient. Since 1844 Pennsylvania had been trying to sell its unprofitable investment.
A transappalachian route through Virginia could attract southern shippers. However, Virginia's legislature was dominated by plantation owners (from the coastal east and southern areas) who already had access to cheap river transport for many months every year. Meanwhile, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was chartered in 1827, reached Harpers Ferry in 1834 and soon out-competed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (which never reached Ohio) for commercial transport down the Potomac River Valley to Chesapeake Bay. The B&O proved a boon for Baltimore, Maryland. The B&O wanted to connect to Virginia, as well as the Ohio River valley through Parkersburg, but Virginia legislators repeatedly denied it permission to build a line along the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys. Virginia instead subsidized first the James River Canal, then railroads (eventually, the Virginia Central Railroad into the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and Covington and Ohio Railroad across the Appalachians) through its higher Appalachian mountains (2200 feet in the proposed Virginia canal route vs the Erie Canal that crossed the Appalachians at 650 feet but much further north). Virginia's legislators wanted to direct its commerce towards its capital (Richmond) and its seaport (Norfolk) rather than toward Baltimore. However, Wheeling had become Virginia's second largest city by 1840, and its interests also lobbied to become a B&O terminus, linking the railroad to cheap river transportation. Especially after the B&O reached Cumberland, Maryland in 1842, railroad technology was out-competing the National Road (which had linked to the C&O Canal at Cumberland). The Virginia General Assembly in the 1830s and through the 1840s required the B&O to take a relatively northern route across the Appalachians in the then-Commonwealth and connect at Wheeling. The B&O finally acquiesced after 1847, its threats to move its transappalachian passage to Pittsburgh having proven idle and Pennsylvania having chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad.
While the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company languished for nearly two decades, in 1836, it managed to raise sufficient private funds to build a wooden bridge between Zane's Island (officially renamed Wheeling Island in 1902) and the Ohio shore. Nonetheless, a navigation channel still remained between Wheeling and that island.
Pennsylvania legislators for decades blocked federal legislation to authorize (much less subsidize) the proposed Wheeling bridge. In 1836, Federal engineers proposed a suspension bridge with a removable section to enable steamboat smokestacks to clear, but Congress tabled it. In 1838, the U.S. postmaster reported 53 irregularities in mail service around Wheeling between January and April. An 1840 postmaster's report urging a bridge to avoid such mail interruptions got lost. Another proposal requiring hinges on high steamboat smokestacks also initially failed. In 1844, a steamboat packet line began connecting Pittsburgh and Cincinnati (nearly bypassing Wheeling). As traffic on the National Road also languished, Virginia's congressmen finally abandoned their efforts to win federal funding for the Wheeling bridge in early 1847. That year civic boosters instead formed a new company to build the bridge, and the new officers requested proposals in May 1847. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track to Wheeling was finally completed in 1853, the same year a packet line connected Wheeling and Louisville.


After these and other delays, in 1847 the legislatures of Virginia and Ohio jointly issued a new Wheeling bridge charter. Charles Ellet and John A. Roebling were invited to submit designs and estimates for a bridge over the east channel of the river to Wheeling Island. Ellett was the chief engineer of the Virginia Central Railroad and in 1853 would build a railroad over the Blue Ridge Mountains at Rock Fish Gap. The new Wheeling bridge would be of a suspension design, since Ellet and Roebling were the foremost authorities. It would also be ninety feet above low water. Their initial calculations relied on the highest smokestacks being about 60 feet, but stack height kept increasing, so the planned bridge came to impede the largest steamboats with high stacks. Ellet received the contract award in 1847 with a bid of $120,000 (Roebling's for a shorter double-span bridge was $130,000), and construction began the same year. The bridge was completed in 1849 for about $250,000.