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Holt, Norfolk

Holt is a market town, civil parish and electoral ward in the English county of Norfolk. The town is 22.8 mi north of the city of Norwich, 9.5 mi west of Cromer and 35 mi east of King's Lynn. The town has a population of 3,550, rising and including the ward to 3,810 at the 2011 census. Holt is within the area covered by North Norfolk District Council. Holt has a heritage railway station; it is the south-western terminus of the preserved North Norfolk Railway, known as the Poppy Line.

Origins
The most likely derivation of the name Holt is from an Anglo-Saxon word for woodland, and Holt is located on wooded high ground of the Cromer-Holt ridge at the crossing point of two ancient by-ways and as such was a natural point for a settlement to grow. The town has a mention in the great survey of 1086 known as the Domesday Book. In the survey it is described as a market town and a port with the nearby port of Cley next the Sea being described as Holt's port. It also had five watermills and twelve plough teams and as such was seen as a busy thriving viable settlement. The first Lord of the Manor was Walter Giffard; it passed to Hugh, Earl of Chester, who then left it to the De Vaux family. By this time Holt had a well-established market and two annual fairs which were held on 25 April and 25 November. Over the years Holt grew as a local place of trade and commerce. The weekly market which had taken place since before the 1080s was stopped in the 1960s.

Great fire
On 1 May 1708, Holt was devastated by a fire which destroyed most of the medieval town in three hours. The fire started at Shirehall Plain and quickly spread through the timber houses of the town. The church was also badly damaged with its thatched chancel destroyed, the lead melted from the windows and the flames spreading up the steeple. Contemporary reports stated that the fire spread so swiftly that the butchers did not have time to rescue their meat from their stalls on the market. The damage to the town was estimated to be in the region of £11,000. The town subsequently received many donations from all over the country to aid reconstruction.

Georgian Holt
With most of the medieval buildings destroyed, the rebuilding made Holt notable for its abundance of Georgian buildings, that being the style of the day. However, the town repaired and retains its Norman parish church, which is dedicated to St Andrew.

1968 RAF mid-air collision
A mid-air collision over the town occurred on the night of 19 August 1968, involving a Victor Tanker from RAF Marham and a Canberra bomber from RAF Bruggen in West Germany. This followed an electrical storm that had disabled radar systems. All seven airmen on board were killed. A memorial stone hangs inside Saint Andrew's Church.

Churches
The ancient Church of England parish church of Holt is dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle and probably has late Saxon origins. It was rebuilt in the early 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style by Sir William de Nerford and his wife Petronilla, daughter of John de Vaux, and a tower was added later in the same century. The church was thatched and was badly damaged in the great Holt fire of 1708. Between 1722 and 1727 it was rebuilt, with contributions from Lord Townshend, the Prince of Wales, and Robert Walpole. The church was restored between 1862 and 1874 by William Butterfield.

The Methodist Church, on Obelisk Plain, was built between 1862 and 1863 to a design by Thomas Jeckyll, on a site donated by William Cozens-Hardy of Letheringsett Hall, who also paid most of the building costs.

The most recent religious building is the Chapel of Gresham's School, designed by Maxwell Ayrton and built in knapped flint and limestone between 1912 and 1916, with two angle turrets and an embattled parapet. This is now a Grade II listed building.

Gresham's School
Gresham's School, a public school founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham, originally for boys but co-educational since 1971, is located on the north side of the town.

The school's former pupils include Benjamin Britten, W. H. Auden, Lord Reith, Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, President Erskine Childers, Sir Christopher Cockerell, Donald Maclean, Sir Lennox Berkeley, Sir Stephen Spender, Richard Hand, Tom Wintringham, Sir James Dyson, Ralph Firman, Sir Peter Brook, Paddy O'Connell, Sebastian Shaw, Olivia Colman, Sienna Guillory, John Tusa, Tom Youngs and Michael Cummings.

Other schools
Holt Community Primary School is a state primary school for children aged 4–11. The Infant School was built in 1910 with the Junior School being built by 1928. The Infant School and Junior School was amalgamated in 1965 to form Holt County Primary School. The school has been extended and developed over the years. It changed its name in 1999 to Holt Community Primary School.

There is no state secondary school in the town, so many children travel to Sheringham High School between the ages of 11 and 16.

Holt Hall
The hall, which stands in an 86 acre estate made up of ancient woodlands, lawns, lakes and gardens, built in the 1840s and extended in the 1860s. It was owned John Rogers, whose son Henry Burcham-Rogers inherited it from his father in 1906. He was still the owner when he died in 1945.

After the Second World War, the property was acquired by Norfolk County Council, which used it for outdoor learning and residential courses. In February 2023, it sold Holt Hall to Gresham's School.

Byfords
1–3 Shirehall Plain – The building is thought to be the oldest house in Holt (the cellar dates back to the 15th century), a survivor of the great fire of Holt in 1708 and a further fire in the building in 1906. The premises traded as a hardware shop or ironmonger's for over 100 years under the ownership of the Byford family. Byfords is now run as a café, delicatessen and B&B.

Blind Sam
Blind Sam is the name given locally to the Queen Victoria Jubilee Lantern located in Obelisk Plain. From the year of Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 until 1921 it stood in the Market Place, where it had two functions, to provide light to the Market Place and to provide drinking water from two fountains at the bottom. The light was powered by the town's gas supply, which at the time was sporadic and unreliable, hence the nickname "Blind Sam". It was moved to Obelisk Plain in 1921 to make way for the war memorial. Made by ironmongers in Glasgow, it was restored in the 1990s.

Obelisk
The pineapple-topped obelisk at Holt is one of a pair of gateposts from Melton Constable Park, the other having been given to the town of Dereham in 1757. Each gatepost had the distances to various places from Holt and Dereham respectively carved into the stone. At the start of the Second World War, to avoid assisting the enemy in the event of invasion, the townspeople of Dereham dumped their obelisk down a deep well, where it remains to this day. The people of Holt whitewashed their obelisk at the start of the Second World War and it remains in good condition.

Water Tower
The town's water was pumped from the common land at Spout Hills to the water tower in Shirehall Plain. The tower was made from bricks, built in 1885 by Erpingham Rural Sanitary Authority and was 56 ft high. It held 15,000 gallons of water and the water level inside the tank could be read from the ground. The tower was in use until 1955 and was demolished in 1957.

Windmill
A brick-built windmill was erected in the late 18th century: when put up for sale in the summer of 1792 it was described as "newly built". It was used by many different owners until the early 1920s. The sails were removed in 1922 and the rest of the machinery was removed in the 1930s. The brick tower was then used for storage until deemed unsafe. The brick tower was demolished in the 1970s. There are now homes on the site, known as Mill Court.

Chapel Yard
Chapel Yard was developed in 1983 by Eric Goodman and Richard Webster from a combination of derelict flint workers cottages, a chapel, the old fire station, the reservists drill hall and the removal of 1950s warehouses.

It was the first mayor development of retail space in the Georgian Market Town since the town was rebuilt after the Great Fire of Holt in 1708

The development was designed by Eric Goodman; the adaption of the buildings and introduction of new infill buildings combining traditional design with an innovative approach delivered a timeless built environment. The development delivered 14 new and renovated commercial outlets bringing an interactive retail and restaurant environment within the conservation zone.

Eric Goodman is further accredited with discovering during renovation works that cottages 3,4,5 and 6 Chapel Yard were from c1550. These are the oldest known buildings in the historic Market Towns’ conservation area and have been given grade II listed status since. The massive chimney breasts have pockets for drying grain. Corn was discovered in pots during renovation.

As part of the development Goodman created design assets to include two new buildings to bring character and a feeling of a timeless and traditional reasoning to the development by adapting a traditional Norfolk cart shed design with an innovative approach to a modern retail environment. The design assets included a large pan tile roof, Oak buttresses to support the roof and in-setting the retail apertures, doors and windows to provide a covered walkway/ terrace. It was also the first creation of a ‘Yard’ of shops which would later help to define new areas within the conservation zone as Holt adopted the reuse of small worker's cottages and redundant land as retail areas for independent shops.

The development received awards in recognition of the contribution to conservation and improvement of the Town in 1983 which included:

The Norfolk Society, a Council for the Protection of Rural England Dated 21 March 1984. Certificate quote - ‘Redevelopment Chapel Yard, Albert Street, Holt, including reconstruction and conservation of old buildings and erection of new, all using mainly traditional materials, thereby giving character and vitality to an area under threat of dereliction. It is notable that no architectural help was involved’

Historic England also gave the buildings at 12 and 8 Albert Street Grade II listed status to protect the newly built environment which suggests Goodman may be the only known design [architect] in Norfolk to receive such an accolade for a new development in North Norfolk. See - 2021 HOLT Conservation Appraisal and Management Plan [page 195].

The development did not receive The Graham Alan Award for Conservation from North Norfolk District Council directly. Mike Alan (son of the late Graham Alan had provided some consultation on the development, it was considered this could be contentious as the award was only in its second year). A letter of recognition from the Judges was received with thanks.

In 1986 A new supermarket, now Budgen's was built in the Town's conservation zone.

The architects for the project consulted with Goodman on the design of their scheme, adopting his design code into this development to create another adaptation of a ‘Norfolk cart shed’ to mirror those newly built in Chapel Yard. The development received the Graham Alan Award 1986.

The award is designed to reflect conservation and restoration of listed and unlisted buildings and for new buildings which, through their design, including the innovative use of traditional building forms and detailing which in this case have contributed to Holt's built environment.

Graham Alan Award Winners.

Chapel Yard has provided a significant contribution in shaping Holt's future over the last 40 years which has created a significant number of jobs in the small market town.

Further developments were to come over the years from 1995 to date which further adopted Goodman's design code. Apple Yard by Ru Bruce-Lockhart, son of the former Gresham's School headmaster. Goodman was consulted on the design of the scheme.

Other projects which adopted the design code: Lee's Yard - Feather Yard - Hoppers Yard - Franklyn's Yard

Chapel Yard is now referenced as part of the 2021 HOLT Conservation Appraisal and Management Plan [pages, 13, 16, 18, 43, 44, 67, 76, 86, 98, 99, 128, 195].

Goodman's design code is accredited with providing North Norfolk District Council with the innovative approach to future Townscape since designing Chapel Yard in 1983 which blends seamlessly and innovatively with the former built environment of the Georgian Town.

In 2022 MP for North Norfolk - Duncan Baker - and former Mayor of Holt recommended Eric Goodman for an MBE in recognition of his unique and defining contribution to North Norfolk and stated ‘Mr Goodman designed and developed Chapel Yard in Holt, which has had a significant impact to North Norfolk…I am personally very grateful to Mr Goodman for all he has done for Holt and the wider community’.

Holt Country Park
Holt Country Park is a short walk from the town. Its history includes a horseracing course, heath, farmland, forestry and woodland garden. It is now woodland dominated with Scots pine and native broadleaves. Its rich ground flora supports wildlife including deer. The park has achieved a Green Flag Award every year since 2005.

Holt Lowes
The Lowes is an area of heathland of around 120 acre to the south of Holt set aside by the Inclosure Act of 1807. The poor of Holt had grazing rights for an animal and also had the right to take wood and gorse from the land for their own use. It is likely that the land was never used by the poor of Holt as the land was not wholly suitable. The Lowes was used for military training during the First World War. It is open to the public along with Holt Country Park. The Lowes has long been recognised as an important area for wildlife, with records going back to the 18th century. It was declared an SSSI in 1954 and for a while managed as a nature reserve by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which continues to act as managing agents for the trustees. As on all lowland heaths, there is a constant need for management to prevent the encroachment of trees. Recent work has concentrated on clearing a large part of the mixed valley mire, an area of sphagnum bog that supports plants like sundews and several species of dragonfly, including one, the keeled skimmer, found nowhere else in East Anglia.

Spout Hills
These consist of 14 acre of green space, which provided the town of Holt with all of its water needs, enabling it to grow and flourish. An old reservoir still exists but the pumping station was dismantled in the 1950s.

Bakers & Larners
Bakers & Larners is a department store located on Market Place. It has been continuously owned by the Baker family since the eighteenth century.

Railway
The nearest railway station to Holt is in the town of Sheringham, where access to the National Rail network is provided by the Bittern Line to Norwich. Services are generally hourly and are operated by Greater Anglia.

History
Holt's original railway station, which opened in 1887, was served by the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway. Most of this network was closed by British Railways in 1959, but the short section from Melton Constable via Holt to Sheringham (services continuing on to Cromer and Norwich) escaped closure for a few more years. It succumbed finally in 1964 when the branch was cut back to Sheringham, which is now the nearest national railway station. The station was later demolished and the site is now under the town's by-pass.

Heritage

In 1965, within a year of the closure of the line, the North Norfolk Railway was formed to restore part of the line as an independent heritage steam railway. Initially, it operated between Sheringham and Weybourne; later, it was extended to the eastern edge of Holt at a new station site. A horse-bus service, the Holt Flyer, once ran between the Railway Tavern in the town centre and the new railway station, timed to connect with trains; this has now been replaced by an AEC Routemaster bus.

Future ambitions
There are now plans by the Norfolk Orbital Railway to extend the railway back towards the town centre and on to Melton Constable and Fakenham.

Buses
Several local bus routes operate in and around Holt, provided by Sanders Coaches.

Roads
The town is on the route of the A148 King's Lynn to Cromer road.

Air
Norwich International Airport is sited in the northern outskirts of the city.

Television
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC East and BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on BBC One, and by ITV Anglia and ITV Yorkshire on ITV1. Television signals are received from either the Tacolneston or Belmont TV transmitters.

Radio
Local radio stations are BBC Radio Norfolk, Heart East, Amber Radio, Greatest Hits Radio East (formerly North Norfolk Radio) and Poppyland Community Radio, a community based station.

Newspapers
The town is served by the local newspapers, The Holt Chronicle, North Norfolk News and Eastern Daily Press.

Holt Festival
The Holt Festival started in Summer 2009 as an arts festival. The event runs for a week and includes music, theatre, literature, cinema and art.

Doctor Who events
On Sunday 25 June 2006, Holt was "invaded" by Daleks. The event was a celebration of BBC Television's classic science fiction series Doctor Who. The Doctor Who Midsummer Invasion attracted many fans of the ever-popular show to the town as well as some of its previous stars. Organised by Planet Skaro, a local sci-fi store that has subsequently closed, the highlight of the day was a Dalek parade through the town centre.

Due to the success of the first Invasion, another science fiction themed event took place in Holt on 30 June 2007.

Sport and recreation
Holt has a Rugby football club, formed in 1961. The club's first match was played against West Norfolk on Gresham's School playing field. In the early days the team used the White Lion Hotel (now closed) for their changing rooms and hospitality. In 1967 the club was able to purchase 9 acre of land on the eastern side of Bridge Road in nearby High Kelling. The club began playing their home games at their new facilities in 1969. At Bridge Road the club has three full-size pitches, six dedicated mini pitches and a clubhouse which was built in 1970. There are changing room facilities for up to 100 players. The club has three senior sides, a junior side and mini rugby sides for 6- to 18-year-olds.

Holt United Football Club was formed in 1894 and was a founder member of the North Norfolk and Norwich League, which began in 1895. In 1927 the club joined the Norwich and District League and went on to win this league on five occasions. In 1935 the club was in the Norfolk and Suffolk League and did not suffer a league defeat until December that year, when they lost to Norwich City A at Carrow Road. Holt was the first amateur team to play at the newly built Carrow Road ground. In 1985 Holt United left their ground at Jubilee Road, which was sold to finance the new Sports Centre complex on Kelling Road. For one season Holt played their matches at Gresham's School. In 1986 the club moved to their new ground at the Sports Centre. Four years later they dropped into junior football. During the past three seasons the club have remained in Division One of the Anglian Combination. At present Holt United runs three sides, the first team playing in the Anglian Combination and the Reserves and colts teams in the North East Norfolk League.

Holt Harlequins Hockey Club (formerly Cromer Hockey Club) plays at the astroturf ground at Gresham's School.

Holt has a King George's Field in memorial to King George V.

Notable people

 * Rex Malcolm Chaplin Dawson FRS (1924–2021), biochemist
 * Geoffrey Gillam (1905–1970), consultant cardiologist
 * Dr Thomas Girdlestone (1758–1822), physician
 * Sir John Gresham (1492–1556), merchant, founder of Gresham's School
 * Sir Richard Gresham (1494–1549), merchant and member of parliament
 * Billa Harrod (1911-2005), architectural conservationist
 * John Holmes (1703–1760), educationist
 * Logie Bruce Lockhart (born 1921 - 7 September 2020), writer and journalist
 * Robert Pilch (1877–1957), footballer
 * Sir Matthew Pinsent (born 1970), Olympic gold medallist in rowing
 * Lewis Radford, Vicar of Holt, later Bishop of Goulburn in Australia
 * Edmund Rogers (1823–1910), journalist and spiritualist
 * Sebastian Shaw (1905–1994), actor
 * Gareth Sibson (born 1977), writer and broadcaster
 * Sir William Stanley (1435–1495), soldier, Lord Chamberlain
 * Kieron Williamson (born 2002), landscape artist

title: Holt, Norfolk


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Subterranean rivers of London

The subterranean or underground rivers of London are or were the direct or indirect tributaries of the upper estuary of the Thames (the Tideway) that were built over during the growth of the metropolis of London. They now flow through culverts, with some of them integral parts of London's sewerage system and diverted accordingly.

North of the Thames
From west to east - sub-tributaries are shown indented
 * River Brent (partially underground)
 * Stamford Brook
 * Parrs Ditch
 * Counter's Creek
 * River Westbourne
 * Tyburn Brook
 * River Tyburn
 * River Fleet, (following Farringdon Street, New Bridge Street and other roads).
 * Lamb's Conduit
 * Fagswell Brook (Follows the course of Charterhouse Street)
 * River Walbrook
 * Lorteburn or Langbourne (now dry)
 * Black Ditch
 * Muswell Stream (sub-sub-tributary via Pymmes Brook and the River Lea)
 * River Moselle (subtributary via the Lea)
 * Hackney Brook (subtributary via the Lea)
 * River Rom (partially underground)

South of the Thames
From west to east - sub-tributaries are shown indented
 * Sudbrook (partially underground)
 * Beverley Brook (partially underground)
 * Graveney (sub tributary of River Wandle)
 * Norbury Brook
 * Falconbrook
 * River Effra
 * River Neckinger
 * Earl's Sluice
 * River Peck
 * River Quaggy (partially underground) (sub tributary of River Ravensbourne)
 * Heathwall Ditch

Development
In June 2008, the office of Mayor of London published outline plans to reinstate some underground rivers. In January 2009, a partnership among the Environment Agency, Natural England, The River Restoration Centre, and the Greater London Authority set out a strategy for putting this into effect by creating the London Rivers Action Plan.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Subterranean rivers of London


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John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet (,  ;  8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street (now number 7). Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.

By the mid-1850s, Millais was moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style to develop a new form of realism in his art. His later works were enormously successful, making Millais one of the wealthiest artists of his day, but some former admirers including William Morris saw this as a sell-out (Millais notoriously allowed one of his paintings to be used for a sentimental soap advertisement). While these and early 20th-century critics, reading art through the lens of Modernism, viewed much of his later production as wanting, this perspective has changed in recent decades, as his later works have come to be seen in the context of wider changes and advanced tendencies in the broader late nineteenth-century art world, and can now be seen as predictive of the art world of the present.

Millais's personal life has also played a significant role in his reputation. His wife Effie was formerly married to the critic John Ruskin, who had supported Millais's early work. The annulment of the Ruskin marriage and Effie's subsequent marriage to Millais have sometimes been linked to his change of style, but she became a powerful promoter of his work and they worked in concert to secure commissions and expand their social and intellectual circles.

Early life
Millais was born in Southampton, England, in 1829, of a prominent Jersey-based family. His parents were John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais (née Evermy). Most of his early childhood was spent in Jersey, to which he retained a strong devotion throughout his life. The author Thackeray once asked him "when England conquered Jersey". Millais replied "Never! Jersey conquered England." The family moved to Dinan in Brittany for a few years in his childhood.

His mother's "forceful personality" was the most powerful influence on his early life. She had a keen interest in art and music, and encouraged her son's artistic bent, promoting the relocating of the family to London to help develop contacts at the Royal Academy of Art. He later said "I owe everything to my mother."

In 1840, his artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy Schools at the still unprecedented age of eleven. While there, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with whom he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (known as the "PRB") in September 1847 in his family home on Gower Street, off Bedford Square.

Pre-Raphaelite works
Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) was highly controversial because of its realistic portrayal of a working class Holy Family labouring in a messy carpentry workshop. Later works were also controversial, though less so. Millais achieved popular success with A Huguenot (1851–52), which depicts a young couple about to be separated because of religious conflicts. He repeated this theme in many later works. All these early works were painted with great attention to detail, often concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

In paintings such as Ophelia (1851–52) Millais created dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces based on the integration of naturalistic elements. This approach has been described as a kind of "pictorial eco-system". Mariana is a painting that Millais painted in 1850–51 based on the play Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare and the poem of the same name by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from 1830. In the play, the young Mariana was to be married, but was rejected by her betrothed when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck.

This style was promoted by the critic John Ruskin, who had defended the Pre-Raphaelites against their critics. Millais's friendship with Ruskin introduced him to Ruskin's wife Effie.

Soon after they met, she modelled for his painting The Order of Release. As Millais painted Effie, they fell in love. Despite having been married to Ruskin for several years, Effie was still a virgin. Her parents realised something was wrong and she filed for an annulment.

Family
In 1855, after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled, Effie and John Millais married. He and Effie eventually had eight children: Everett, born in 1856; George, born in 1857; Effie, born in 1858; Mary, born in 1860; Alice, born in 1862; Geoffroy, born in 1863; John in 1865; and Sophie in 1868. Their youngest son, John Guille Millais, became a naturalist, wildlife artist, and Millais's posthumous biographer. Their daughter Alice (1862–1936), later Alice Stuart-Worsley after she married Charles Stuart-Worsley, was a close friend and muse of the composer Edward Elgar, and is thought to have been an inspiration for themes in his Violin Concerto.

Effie's younger sister Sophie Gray sat for several pictures by Millais, prompting some speculation about the nature of their apparently fond relationship.

Later works
After his marriage, Millais began to paint in a broader style, which was condemned by Ruskin as "a catastrophe". It has been argued that this change of style resulted from Millais's need to increase his output to support his growing family. Unsympathetic critics such as William Morris accused him of "selling out" to achieve popularity and wealth. His admirers, in contrast, pointed to the artist's connections with Whistler and Albert Moore, and influence on John Singer Sargent. Millais himself argued that as he grew more confident as an artist, he could paint with greater boldness. In his article "Thoughts on our Art of Today" (1888), he recommended Velázquez and Rembrandt as models for artists to follow. Paintings such as The Eve of St. Agnes and The Somnambulist clearly show an ongoing dialogue between the artist and Whistler, whose work Millais strongly supported. Other paintings of the late 1850s and 1860s can be interpreted as anticipating aspects of the Aesthetic Movement. Many deploy broad blocks of harmoniously arranged colour and are symbolic rather than narratival. From 1862, the Millais family lived at 7 Cromwell Place, Kensington, London.

Later works, from the 1870s onwards demonstrate Millais's reverence for Old Masters such as Joshua Reynolds and Velázquez. Many of these paintings were on an historical theme. Notable among these are The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878) depicting the Princes in the Tower, The Northwest Passage (1874) and the Boyhood of Raleigh (1871). Such paintings indicate Millais's interest in subjects connected to Britain's history and expanding empire. Millais also achieved great popularity with his paintings of children, notably Bubbles (1886) – famous, or perhaps notorious, for being used in the advertising of Pears soap – and Cherry Ripe. His last project (1896) was to be a painting entitled "The Last Trek". Based on his illustration for his son's book, it depicted a hunter lying dead in the veldt, his body contemplated by two onlookers.

Landscapes 1870–1892
His many landscape paintings of this period usually depict difficult or dangerous terrain. The first of these, Chill October (1870, Collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber), was painted in Perth, near his wife's family home. It was the first of the large-scale Scottish landscapes Millais painted periodically throughout his later career. Usually autumnal and often bleakly unpicturesque, they evoke a mood of melancholy and sense of transience that recalls his cycle-of-nature paintings of the later 1850s, especially Autumn Leaves (Manchester Art Gallery) and The Vale of Rest (Tate Britain), though with little or no direct symbolism or human activity to point to their meaning.

In 1870 Millais returned to full landscape pictures, and over the next twenty years painted a number of scenes of Perthshire where he was annually found hunting and fishing from August until late into the autumn each year. Most of these landscapes are autumnal or early winter in season and show bleak, dank, water-fringed bog or moor, loch, and riverside. Millais never returned to "blade by blade" landscape painting, nor to the vibrant greens of his own outdoor work in the early fifties, although the assured handling of his broader, freer later style is equally accomplished in its close observation of scenery. Many were painted elsewhere in Perthshire, near Dunkeld and Birnam, where Millais rented grand houses each autumn to hunt and fish. Christmas Eve, his first full landscape snow scene, painted in 1887, was a view looking towards Murthly Castle.

Illustrations
Millais was also very successful as a book illustrator, notably for the works of Anthony Trollope and the poems of Tennyson. His complex illustrations of the parables of Jesus were published in 1864. His father-in-law commissioned stained-glass windows based on them for Kinnoull Parish Church, Kinnoull. He also provided illustrations for magazines such as Good Words. As a young man, Millais frequently went on sketching expeditions to Keston and Hayes. While there he painted a sign for an inn where he used to stay, near to Hayes church (cited in Chums Annual, 1896, page 213).

Academic career and baronetage
Millais was elected as an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1853; a decade later in 1863, he was elected as a full member of the Academy, in which he was a prominent and active participant.

In July 1885, Queen Victoria created him a baronet, of Palace Gate, in the parish of St Mary Abbot, Kensington, in the county of Middlesex, and of Saint Ouen, in the Island of Jersey, making him the first artist to be honoured with a hereditary title.

Last years and death
After the death of Lord Leighton in 1896, Millais was elected President of the Royal Academy. He died later in the same year from throat cancer. He was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.

Additionally, between 1881 and 1882, Millais was elected and acted as the president of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.

Legacy

When Millais died in 1896, the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII) chaired a memorial committee which commissioned a statue of the artist. The statue, by Thomas Brock, was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Britain) in the garden on the east side in 1905. On 23 November that year, the Pall Mall Gazette called it "a breezy statue, representing the man in the characteristic attitude in which we all knew him". In 1953, Tate director Norman Reid attempted to have it replaced by Auguste Rodin's John the Baptist, and in 1962 again proposed its removal, calling its presence "positively harmful". His efforts were frustrated by the statue's owner, the Ministry of Works. Ownership was transferred from the Ministry to English Heritage in 1996, and by them in turn to the Tate. In 2000, under Stephen Deuchar's directorship, the statue was removed to the side of the building to welcome visitors to the refurbished Manton Road entrance. In 2007, the artist was the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain, London visited by 151,000 people. The exhibition then traveled to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, followed by venues in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan, and seen by over 660,000 visitors in total.

Millais's relationship with Ruskin and Effie has been the subject of several dramas, beginning with the silent film The Love of John Ruskin from 1912. There have also been stage and radio plays and an opera. The 2014 film Effie Gray, written by Emma Thompson, featured Tom Sturridge as Millais. The Pre-Raphaelites have been the subjects of two BBC period dramas. The first, entitled The Love School, was shown in 1975, starring Peter Egan as Millais. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Millais is played by Samuel Barnett. It was first broadcast on BBC 2 Tuesday, 21 July 2009. Laurie Kynaston portrayed Millais in the Paramount+ adaptation of Elizabeth Macneal's The Doll Factory (2023).

title: John Everett Millais


text:
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090618033148/http://bigredl.co.uk:80/Swindonbansspeedcameras.htm to http://www.bigredl.co.uk/Swindonbansspeedcameras.htm

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Places of worship
There are at least three articles on places of worship in Swindon, so instead of adding those links to the 'See also' section, where supposedly churches are not to be listed, there is now a places of worship subsection under Demography - the only section that mentions denominations and faiths in the article. Pjposullivan (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a useful addition to the article. If you like, you could make a whole new section 'Religious sites' as suggested in How to write about UK settlements.  Wire723 (talk) 19:24, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Christ church, Bath Road Methodist Church and Holy Rood School are just a few holy places. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.0.114 (talk) 16:47, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Photo request
I received this request recently (which I am unable to fulfill) for a picture of the UK Space Agency HQ on North Star Avenue. Does anyone who contributes to/watches this page a) live in Swindon b) feel able to take the picture and upload it to Commons? If so, can you let User:WhisperToMe know? Thanks, Moonraker12 (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

The West Country Challenge
Would you like to win up to £250 in Amazon vouchers for participating in The West Country Challenge?

The The West Country Challenge will take place from 8 to 28 August 2016. The idea is to create and improve articles about Bristol, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, like this one.

The format will be based on Wales's successful Awaken the Dragon which saw over 1000 article improvements and creations and 65 GAs/FAs. As with the Dragon contest, the focus is more on improving core articles and breathing new life into those older stale articles and stubs which might otherwise not get edited in years. All contributions, including new articles, are welcome though.

Work on any of the items at: or other articles relating to the area.
 * Core articles
 * Missing article hotlist
 * Missing photograph hotlist

There will be sub contests focusing on particular areas:
 * Bristol (Day 1-3)
 * Cornwall and Scilly (Day 4-6)
 * Devon (Day 7-9)
 * Dorset (Day 10-12)
 * Gloucestershire (Day 13-15)
 * Somerset (Day 16-18)
 * Wiltshire (Day 19-21)

To sign up or get more information visit the contest pages at WikiProject England/The West Country Challenge.— Rod talk 15:53, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Civil Parishes
As of April 1st, new civil parishes have been created which cover the entire borough. This article, and others, will need tweaking accordingly.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:44, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this useful information. I dealt with one of the changes by updating Nythe. Wire723 (talk) 16:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Why has the whole borough been parished?--2.26.154.4 (talk) 16:38, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Swindon. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20020619050944/http://www.swindonsotherrailway.co.uk/his.html to http://www.swindonsotherrailway.co.uk/his.html/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071224203526/http://glostransporthistory.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/RR%20MidSWJR.htm to http://glostransporthistory.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/RR%20MidSWJR.htm/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081028190519/http://www.steampicturelibrary.com/pictures_447348/Swindon-Town-Station-c1920.html to http://www.steampicturelibrary.com/pictures_447348/Swindon-Town-Station-c1920.html/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930015523/http://archive.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/2000/5/31/244211.html/ to http://archive.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/2000/5/31/244211.html/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070711162236/http://www.multicultural-matters.com/polish_community.htm to http://www.multicultural-matters.com/polish_community.htm/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071006212155/http://www.agwsha.nhs.uk/board/july04/Agenda_Item_6.1_Vic_SOC_Final_10_June_20041.pdf to http://www.agwsha.nhs.uk/board/july04/Agenda_Item_6.1_Vic_SOC_Final_10_June_20041.pdf/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060926183118/http://www.swindon.gov.uk/roadstransport/roadsandtransport-carparkinggeneral-link to http://www.swindon.gov.uk/roadstransport/roadsandtransport-carparkinggeneral-link
 * Added tag to http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/leisure/music/news/9813697.Catch_the_Breeze/

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GOOD PLACE
Good place to live because it is very accessible. There are lots of schools and of course the Great Western Hospital. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.175.182.231 (talk) 20:03, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

New Ski slope / cinema / hotel / shopping center
Good Morning,

Would an editor be able to update the information on the Swindon page to include information from the below website.

https://www.northstarvillage.co.uk/

Thank you 149.155.50.251 (talk) 11:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Swindon


text:
Migration Period

The Migration Period (circa 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman kingdoms.

The term refers to the important role played by the migration, invasion, and settlement of various tribes, notably the Franks, Goths, Alemanni, Alans, Huns, early Slavs, Pannonian Avars, Bulgars and Magyars within or into the territories of the Roman Empire and Europe as a whole. The period is traditionally taken to have begun in AD 375 (possibly as early as 300) and ended in 568. Various factors contributed to this phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still widely discussed.

Historians differ as to the dates for the beginning and ending of the Migration Period. The beginning of the period is widely regarded as the invasion of Europe by the Huns from Asia in about 375 and the ending with the conquest of Italy by the Lombards in 568, but a more loosely set period is from as early as 300 to as late as 800. For example, in the 4th century a very large group of Goths was settled as foederati within the Roman Balkans, and the Franks were settled south of the Rhine in Roman Gaul. In 406 a particularly large and unexpected crossing of the Rhine was made by a group of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. As central power broke down in the Western Roman Empire, the military became more important but was dominated by men of barbarian origin.

There are contradictory opinions as to whether the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a result of an increase in migrations, or if both the breakdown of central power and the increased importance of non-Romans created additional internal factors. Migrations, and the use of non-Romans in the military, were known in the periods before and after, and the Eastern Roman Empire adapted and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, although it involved the establishment of competing barbarian kingdoms, was to some extent managed by the Eastern emperors.

The migrants comprised war bands or tribes of 10,000 to 20,000 people. Immigration was common throughout the time of the Roman Empire, but over the course of 100 years, the migrants numbered not more than 750,000 in total, compared to an average 40 million population of the Roman Empire at that time. The first migrations of peoples were made by Germanic tribes such as the Goths (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths), the Vandals, the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii, the Jutes, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, the Sciri and the Franks; they were later pushed westward by the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs and the Bulgars. Later invasions, such as the Vikings, the Normans, the Varangians, the Hungarians, the Arabs, the Turks, and the Mongols also had significant effects (especially in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe).

Germanic tribes prior to migration
Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany to the adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine around 200 BC), moving into southern Germany up to the Roman provinces of Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and later by Julius Caesar. It is this western group which was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56–117) and Julius Caesar (100–44 BC). A later wave of Germanic tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia, between 600 and 300 BC, to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathian Mountains. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alemanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.

First wave

The first wave of invasions, between AD 300 and 500, is partly documented by Greek and Latin historians but is difficult to verify archaeologically. It puts Germanic peoples in control of most areas of what was then the Western Roman Empire.

The Tervingi crossed the Danube into Roman territory in 376, in a migration fleeing the invading Huns. Some time later in Marcianopolis, the escort to their leader Fritigern was killed while meeting with Roman commander Lupicinus. The Tervingi rebelled, and the Visigoths, a group derived either from the Tervingi or from a fusion of mainly Gothic groups, eventually invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410 before settling in Gaul. Around 460, they founded the Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. They were followed into Roman territory first by a confederation of Herulian, Rugian, and Scirian warriors under Odoacer, that deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, and later by the Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric the Great, who settled in Italy.

In Gaul, the Franks (a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been aligned with Rome since the 3rd century) entered Roman lands gradually during the 5th century, and after consolidating power under Childeric and his son Clovis's decisive victory over Syagrius in 486, established themselves as rulers of northern Roman Gaul. Fending off challenges from the Alemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of what would later become France and Germany.

The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain occurred during the 5th century, when Roman control of Britain had come to an end. The Burgundians settled in northwestern Italy, Switzerland and Eastern France in the 5th century.

Second wave

Between AD 500 and 700, Slavic tribes settled more areas of central Europe and pushed farther into southern and eastern Europe, gradually making the eastern half of Europe predominantly Slavic. Additionally, Turkic tribes such as the Avars and later Ugric Magyars became involved in this second wave. In AD 567, the Avars and the Lombards destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom. The Lombards, a Germanic people, settled in Italy with their Herulian, Suebian, Gepid, Thuringian, Bulgar, Sarmatian and Saxon allies in the 6th century. They were later followed by the Bavarians and the Franks, who conquered and ruled most of Italy.

The Bulgars, originally a nomadic group probably from Central Asia, occupied the Pontic steppe north of Caucasus since the 2nd century, but later, pushed by the Khazars, the majority of them migrated west and dominated Byzantine territories along the lower Danube in the 7th century. From that time the demographic picture of the Balkans changed permanently, becoming predominantly Slavic, while pockets of native people survived in the mountains of the Balkans.

During the early Byzantine–Arab Wars, Arab armies attempted to invade southeast Europe via Asia Minor during the late 7th and early 8th centuries but were defeated at the siege of Constantinople (717–718) by the joint forces of Byzantium and the Bulgars. During the Khazar–Arab Wars, the Khazars stopped the Arab expansion into Europe across the Caucasus (7th and 8th centuries). At the same time, the Moors (consisting of Arabs and Berbers) invaded Europe via Gibraltar (conquering Hispania from the Visigothic Kingdom in 711), before being halted by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in Gaul. These battles broadly demarcated the frontiers between Christendom and Islam for the next millennium. The following centuries saw the Muslims successful in conquering most of Sicily from the Christians by 902.

The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin from around AD 895 and the following Hungarian invasions of Europe and the Viking expansion from the late 8th century conventionally mark the last large movements of the period. Christian missionaries gradually converted the non-Islamic newcomers and integrated them into the Christendom.

Barbarian identity
Analysis of barbarian identity and how it was created and expressed during the Barbarian Invasions has elicited discussion among scholars. Herwig Wolfram, a historian of the Goths, in discussing the equation of migratio gentium with Völkerwanderung, observes that Michael Ignaz Schmidt introduced the equation in his 1778 history of the Germans. Wolfram observed that the significance of gens as a biological community was shifting, even during the early Middle Ages and that "to complicate matters, we have no way of devising a terminology that is not derived from the concept of nationhood created during the French Revolution".

The "primordialistic" paradigm prevailed during the 19th century. Scholars, such as German linguist Johann Gottfried Herder, viewed tribes as coherent biological (racial) entities, using the term to refer to discrete ethnic groups. He also believed that the Volk were an organic whole, with a core identity and spirit evident in art, literature and language. These characteristics were seen as intrinsic, unaffected by external influences, even conquest. Language, in particular, was seen as the most important expression of ethnicity. They argued that groups sharing the same (or similar) language possessed a common identity and ancestry. This was the Romantic ideal that there once had been a single German, Celtic or Slavic people who originated from a common homeland and spoke a common tongue, helping to provide a conceptual framework for political movements of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism.

From the 1960s, a reinterpretation of archaeological and historical evidence prompted scholars, such as Goffart and Todd, to propose new models for explaining the construction of barbarian identity. They maintained that no sense of shared identity was perceived by the Germani; a similar theory having been proposed for Celtic and Slavic groups.

A theory states that the primordialist mode of thinking was encouraged by a prima facie interpretation of Graeco-Roman sources, which grouped together many tribes under such labels as Germanoi, Keltoi or Sclavenoi, thus encouraging their perception as distinct peoples. Modernists argue that the uniqueness perceived by specific groups was based on common political and economic interests rather than biological or racial distinctions. Indeed, on this basis, some schools of thought in recent scholarship urge that the concept of Germanic peoples be jettisoned altogether.

The role of language in constructing and maintaining group identity can be ephemeral since large-scale language shifts occur commonly in history. Modernists propose the idea of "imagined communities"; the barbarian polities in late antiquity were social constructs rather than unchanging lines of blood kinship. The process of forming tribal units was called "ethnogenesis", a term coined by Soviet scholar Yulian Bromley. The Austrian school (led by Reinhard Wenskus) popularized this idea, which influenced medievalists such as Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl and Patrick J. Geary. It argues that the stimulus for forming tribal polities was perpetuated by a small nucleus of people, known as the Traditionskern ("kernel of tradition"), who were a military or aristocratic elite. This core group formed a standard for larger units, gathering adherents by employing amalgamative metaphors such as kinship and aboriginal commonality and claiming that they perpetuated an ancient, divinely-sanctioned lineage.

"The common, track-filled map of the Völkerwanderung may illustrate such [a] course of events, but it misleads. Unfolded over long periods of time, the changes of position that took place were necessarily irregular ... (with) periods of emphatic discontinuity. For decades and possibly centuries, the tradition bearers idled, and the tradition itself hibernated. There was ample time for forgetfulness to do its work."

Viewpoints
"Völkerwanderung is a German word, borrowed from German historiography, that refers to the early migrations of the Germanic peoples. In a broader sense it can mean the mass migration of whole tribes or ethnic groups." Rather than "invasion", German and Slavic scholars speak of "migration" (see Völkerwanderung, Stěhování národů, folkvandring and népvándorlás), aspiring to the idea of a dynamic and "wandering Indo-Germanic people".

In contrast, the standard terms in French and Italian historiography translate to "barbarian invasions", or even "barbaric invasions" (Invasions barbares, Invasioni barbariche)

Historians have postulated several explanations for the appearance of "barbarians" on the Roman frontier: climate change, weather and crops, population pressure, a "primeval urge" to push into the Mediterranean, the construction of the Great Wall of China causing a "domino effect" of tribes being forced westward, leading to the Huns falling upon the Goths who, in turn, pushed other Germanic tribes before them. In general, French and Italian scholars have tended to view this as a catastrophic event, the destruction of a civilization and the beginning of a "Dark Age" that set Europe back a millennium. In contrast, German and English historians have tended to see Roman–Barbarian interaction as the replacement of a "tired, effete and decadent Mediterranean civilization" with a "more virile, martial, Nordic one". The scholar Guy Halsall has seen the barbarian movement as the result of the fall of the Roman Empire, not its cause. Archaeological discoveries have confirmed that Germanic and Slavic tribes were settled agriculturalists who were probably merely "drawn into the politics of an empire already falling apart for quite a few other causes". Goffart argues that the process of settlement was connected to hospitalitas, the Roman practice of quartering soldiers among the civilian population. The Romans, by granting land and the right to levy taxes to allied (Germanic) armies, hoped to reduce the financial burdens of the empire. The Crisis of the Third Century caused significant changes within the Roman Empire in both its western and its eastern portions. In particular, economic fragmentation removed many of the political, cultural and economic forces that had held the empire together.

The rural population in Roman provinces became distanced from the metropolis, and there was little to differentiate them from other peasants across the Roman frontier. In addition, Rome increasingly used foreign mercenaries to defend itself. That "barbarisation" parallelled changes within Barbaricum. To this end, noted linguist Dennis Howard Green wrote, "the first centuries of our era witness not merely a progressive Romanisation of barbarian society, but also an undeniable barbarisation of the Roman world."

For example, the Roman Empire played a vital role in building up barbarian groups along its frontier. Propped up with imperial support and gifts, the armies of allied barbarian chieftains served as buffers against other, hostile, barbarian groups. The disintegration of Roman economic power weakened groups that had come to depend on Roman gifts for the maintenance of their own power. The arrival of the Huns helped prompt many groups to invade the provinces for economic reasons.

The nature of the barbarian takeover of former Roman provinces varied from region to region. For example, in Aquitaine, the provincial administration was largely self-reliant. Halsall has argued that local rulers simply "handed over" military rule to the Ostrogoths, acquiring the identity of the newcomers. In Gaul, the collapse of imperial rule resulted in anarchy: the Franks and Alemanni were pulled into the ensuing "power vacuum", resulting in conflict. In Spain, local aristocrats maintained independent rule for some time, raising their own armies against the Vandals. Meanwhile, the Roman withdrawal from lowland England resulted in conflict between Saxons and the Brittonic chieftains (whose centres of power retreated westward as a result). The Eastern Roman Empire attempted to maintain control of the Balkan provinces despite a thinly-spread imperial army relying mainly on local militias and an extensive effort to refortify the Danubian limes. The ambitious fortification efforts collapsed, worsening the impoverished conditions of the local populace and resulting in colonization by Slavic warriors and their families.

Halsall and Noble have argued that such changes stemmed from the breakdown in Roman political control, which exposed the weakness of local Roman rule. Instead of large-scale migrations, there were military takeovers by small groups of warriors and their families, who usually numbered only in the tens of thousands. The process involved active, conscious decision-making by Roman provincial populations.

The collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in the provinces, which may explain why the provinces then underwent dramatic cultural changes even though few barbarians settled in them. Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society", and they maintained a structured and hierarchical (but attenuated) form of Roman administration.

Ironically, they lost their unique identity as a result of such an accommodation and were absorbed into Latinhood. In contrast, in the east, Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian" existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces". Their organizational models were not Roman, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success. Thus they arguably had a greater effect on their region than the Goths, the Franks or the Saxons had on theirs.

Ethnicity
Based on the belief that particular types of artifacts, elements of personal adornment generally found in a funerary context, are thought to indicate the ethnicity of the person buried, the "Culture-History" school of archaeology assumed that archaeological cultures represent the Urheimat (homeland) of tribal polities named in historical sources. As a consequence, the shifting extensions of material cultures were interpreted as the expansion of peoples.

Influenced by constructionism, process-driven archaeologists rejected the culture-historical doctrine and marginalized the discussion of ethnicity altogether and focused on the intragroup dynamics that generated such material remains. Moreover, they argued that adoption of new cultures could occur through trade or internal political developments rather than only military takeovers.

Depiction in media

 * Terry Jones' Barbarians, a 4-part TV documentary series first broadcast on BBC 2 in 2006
 * Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion and Total War: Attila, strategy video games by The Creative Assembly
 * Barbarians, 2004 documentary miniseries on The History Channel

title: Migration Period


text:
Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a member of the Nazi Party, the Gauleiter (regional leader) of Franconia and a member of the Reichstag, the national legislature. He was the founder and publisher of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.

After the war, Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg trials. Specifically, he was found to have continued his vitriolic antisemitic propaganda when he was well aware that Jews were being murdered. For this, he was executed by hanging. Streicher was the first member of the Nazi regime held accountable for inciting genocide by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Early life
Streicher was born in Fleinhausen, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, one of nine children of the teacher Friedrich Streicher and his wife Anna (née Weiss). He worked as an elementary school teacher, as his father had. In 1913, Streicher married Kunigunde Roth, a baker's daughter, in Nuremberg. They had two sons, Lothar (born 1915) and Elmar (born 1918).

Streicher joined the German Army in 1914. For his outstanding combat performance during the First World War, he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class, as well as earning a battlefield commission as an officer (lieutenant), despite having several reported instances of poor behaviour in his military record, and at a time when officers were primarily from aristocratic families. Following the end of World War I, Streicher was demobilised and returned to Nuremberg. Upon his return, Streicher took up another teaching position there but something unknown happened in 1919, which turned him into a "radical anti-Semite".

Early politics
Streicher was heavily influenced by the endemic antisemitism found in pre-war Germany, especially that of Theodor Fritsch. In February 1919, Streicher became active in the antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defense Federation), one of the various radical-nationalist organizations that sprang up in the wake of the failed German Communist revolution of 1918. Such groups fostered the view that Jews and Bolsheviks were synonymous, and that they were traitors trying to subject Germany to Communist rule. In 1920 Streicher turned to the Deutschsozialistische Partei (German Socialist Party, DSP), a group whose platform was close to that of the Nazi Party, or Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (National Socialist German Workers' Party or NSDAP). The DSP had been created in May 1919 as an initiative of Rudolf von Sebottendorf as a child of the Thule Society, and its program was based on the ideas of the mechanical engineer Alfred Brunner (1881–1936); in 1919, the party was officially inaugurated in Hanover. Its leading members included Hans Georg Müller, Max Sesselmann and Friedrich Wiesel, the first two editors of the Münchner Beobachter. Julius Streicher founded his local branch in 1919 in Nuremberg.

By the end of 1919, the DSP had branches in Düsseldorf, Kiel, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Nuremberg and Munich. Streicher sought to move the German Socialists in a more virulently antisemitic direction – an effort which aroused enough opposition that he left the group and brought his now-substantial following to yet another organisation in 1921, the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft (German Working Community), which hoped to unite the various antisemitic völkisch movements. Meanwhile, Streicher's rhetoric against the Jews continued to intensify to such a degree that the leadership of the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft thought he was dangerous and criticized him for his obsessive "hatred of the Jews and foreign races."

Nazism
In 1921, Streicher left the German Socialist Party and joined the Nazi Party, bringing with him enough members of the DSP to almost double the size of the Nazi Party overnight. He would later claim that because his political work brought him into contact with German Jews, he "must therefore have been fated to become later on, a writer and speaker on racial politics". He visited Munich in order to hear Adolf Hitler speak, an experience that he later said left him transformed. When asked about that moment, Streicher stated: "It was on a winter's day in 1922. I sat unknown in the large hall of the Bürgerbräuhaus ... suspense was in the air. Everyone seemed tense with excitement, with anticipation. Then suddenly a shout. "Hitler is coming!" Thousands of men and women jumped to their feet as if propelled by a mysterious power ... they shouted, "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" ... And then he stood on the podium ... Then I knew that in this Adolf Hitler was someone extraordinary ... Here was one who could wrest out of the German spirit and the German heart the power to break the chains of slavery. Yes! Yes! This man spoke as a messenger from heaven at a time when the gates of hell were opening to pull down everything. And when he finally finished, and while the crowd raised the roof with the singing of the "Deutschland" song, I rushed to the stage."

Nearly religiously converted by this speech, Streicher believed from this point forward that, "it was his destiny to serve Hitler".

In May 1923 Streicher founded the sensationalist newspaper Der Stürmer (The Stormer, or, loosely, The Attacker). From the outset, the chief aim of the paper was to promulgate antisemitic propaganda; the first issue had an excerpt that stated, "As long as the Jew is in the German household, we will be Jewish slaves. Therefore he must go." Historian Richard J. Evans describes the newspaper: "[Der Stürmer] rapidly established itself as the place where screaming headlines introduced the most rabid attacks on Jews, full of sexual innuendo, racist caricatures, made-up accusations of ritual murder, and titillating, semi-pornographic stories of Jewish men seducing innocent German girls."

In November 1923, Streicher participated in Hitler's first effort to seize power, the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Streicher marched with Hitler in the front row of the would-be revolutionaries. As a result of his participation in the attempted Putsch, Streicher was suspended from teaching. His loyalty to the cause earned him Hitler's lifelong trust and protection; in the years that followed, Streicher would be one of the dictator's few true intimates. Streicher, Rudolf Hess, Emil Maurice, and Dietrich Eckart were the only Nazis mentioned in Mein Kampf; in the book, Hitler praised him for subordinating the German Socialist Party to the Nazi Party, a move Hitler believed was essential to the success of the Nazis. When the Nazi Party was banned in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt, Streicher in early 1924 joined the Greater German People's Community (Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft, GVG) a Nazi front organization established by Alfred Rosenberg. Streicher challenged Rosenberg's weak leadership and on 9 July 1924 was elected as Chairman of the GVG in his place. When Hitler was released from his prison sentence at Landsberg am Lech on 20 December 1924 for his role in the Putsch, Streicher was one of the few remaining followers waiting for him at his Munich apartment. Hitler – who would value loyalty and faithfulness very highly throughout his life – remained loyal to Streicher even when he landed in trouble with the Nazi hierarchy. Although Hitler would allow suppression of Der Stürmer at times when it was politically important for the Nazis to be seen as respectable, and although he would admit that Streicher was not a very good administrator, he never withdrew his personal loyalty.

In April 1924, Streicher was elected to the Bavarian Landtag (legislature), a position which gave him a margin of parliamentary immunity — a safety net that would help him resist efforts to silence his racist message. In January 1925 he also joined the Nuremberg City Council. Hitler re-founded the Nazi Party on 27 February 1925 in a speech at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Streicher was present and pledged his loyalty; the GVG was soon formally disbanded. As a reward for Streicher's loyalty and dedication, on 2 April he was appointed Gauleiter of Nordbayern the Bavarian region that included Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia. He established his capital in his home town of Nuremberg. His jurisdiction would undergo several changes in the coming years. On 1 October 1928, it was significantly reduced to the area around Nuremberg-Fürth. On 1 March 1929, it again expanded, absorbing a neighboring Gau. Now encompassing all of Middle Franconia, it was renamed Gau Mittelfranken. Finally, in April 1933, the districts were consolidated and became simply Gau Franken. In the early years of the party's rise, Gauleiter were essentially party functionaries without real power; but in the final years of the Weimar Republic, as the Nazi Party grew, so did their power. Gauleiters such as Streicher wielded immense power and authority under the Nazi state.

Rise of Der Stürmer
Beginning in 1924, Streicher used Der Stürmer as a mouthpiece not only for general antisemitic attacks, but for calculated smear campaigns against specific Jews, such as the Nuremberg city official Julius Fleischmann, who worked for Streicher's nemesis, mayor Hermann Luppe. Der Stürmer accused Fleischmann of stealing socks from his quartermaster during combat in World War I. Fleischmann sued Streicher and disproved the allegations in court, where Streicher was fined 900 marks. Der Stürmer's official slogan, Die Juden sind unser Unglück (the Jews are our misfortune), was deemed non-actionable under German statutes, since it was not a direct incitement to violence.

Streicher's opponents complained to authorities that Der Stürmer violated a statute against religious offense with his constant promulgation of the "blood libel" – the medieval accusation that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzoh. Streicher argued that his accusations were based on race, not religion, and that his communications were political speech, and therefore protected by the German constitution.

Streicher orchestrated his early campaigns against Jews to make the most extreme possible claims, short of violating a law that might get the paper shut down. He insisted in the pages of his newspaper that the Jews had caused the worldwide Depression, and were responsible for the crippling unemployment and inflation which afflicted Germany during the 1920s. He claimed that Jews were white-slavers responsible for Germany's prostitution rings. Real unsolved killings in Germany, especially of children or women, were often confidently explained in the pages of Der Stürmer as cases of "Jewish ritual murder".

One of Streicher's constant themes was the sexual violation of ethnic German women by Jews, a subject which he used to publish semi-pornographic tracts and images detailing degrading sexual acts. The fascination with the pornographic aspects of the propaganda in Der Stürmer was an important feature for many antisemites. With the help of his cartoonist Phillip "Fips" Rupprecht, Streicher published image after image of Jewish stereotypes and sexually-charged encounters. His portrayal of Jews as subhuman and evil is considered to have played a critical role in the dehumanization and marginalization of the Jewish minority in the eyes of common Germans – creating the necessary conditions for the later perpetration of the Holocaust. To protect himself from accountability, Streicher relied on Hitler's protection. Hitler declared that Der Stürmer was his favorite newspaper, and saw to it that each weekly issue was posted for public reading in special glassed-in display cases known as "Stürmerkasten". The newspaper reached a peak circulation of 600,000 in 1935. One of the possible solutions to the Nazi's perceived problem Streicher mentioned in the pages of Der Stürmer was transporting Jews to Madagascar.

Streicher's publishing firm also released three antisemitic books for children, including the 1938 Der Giftpilz (translated into English as The Toadstool or The Poisonous Mushroom), one of the most widespread pieces of propaganda, which warned about the supposed dangers Jews posed by using the metaphor of an attractive yet deadly mushroom. Late in 1936 Streicher also issued Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath, an infamously anti-Semitic children's picture book by 18 year old Elvira Bauer. In the book the Jews are depicted as 'children of the devil' and Streicher as the great educator and a hero of all German children.

Streicher did not limit his vituperative attacks to Jews themselves but also launched them against those he perceived as insufficiently hostile towards Jews. For example, he dismissed Mussolini as a Jewish lackey for not being anti-Semitic enough. Between 1935 and the end of the Second World War, upwards of 6,500 persons were identified and denounced in Der Stürmer for not being sufficiently anti-Semitic.

Streicher in power
In July 1932, Streicher was elected as a deputy of the Reichstag from electoral constituency 26, Franconia, a seat that he would hold throughout the Nazi regime. In April 1933, after Nazi control of the German state apparatus gave the Gauleiters enormous power, Streicher organised a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses which was used as a dress-rehearsal for other antisemitic commercial measures. As he consolidated his hold on power, he came to more or less rule the city of Nuremberg and his Gau Franken, and boasted that every Jew had been removed from Hersbruck. Among the nicknames provided by his enemies were "King of Nuremberg" and the "Beast of Franconia." Because of his role as Gauleiter of Franconia, he also gained the nickname of Frankenführer. Streicher became a member of the SA on 27 January 1934 with the rank of SA-Gruppenführer and was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1937. On 6 September 1935, Hitler named him to the Academy for German Law. The New York Times decried this action with the headline: "Reich Honors Streicher. Anti-Semitic Leader is Named to Academy for German Law."

Streicher later claimed that he was only "indirectly responsible" for passage of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and that he felt slighted because he was not directly consulted. Perhaps epitomizing the "profound anti-intellectualism" of the Nazi Party, Streicher once opined that, "If the brains of all university professors were put at one end of the scale, and the brains of the Führer at the other, which end do you think would tip?"

Streicher was ordered to take part in the establishment of the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life, that was to be organized together with the German Christians, the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Reich Ministry of Education and the Reich Ministry of the Churches. A surgical operation prevented Streicher from participating fully in this endeavor. This antisemitic standpoint concerning the Bible can be traced back to the earliest time of the Nazi movement, for instance Dietrich Eckart's (Hitler's early mentor) book Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Dialogue Between Adolf Hitler and Me, where it was claimed that "Jewish forgeries" had been added to the New Testament.

In August 1938, Streicher ordered that the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg be destroyed as part of his contribution to Kristallnacht. Streicher later claimed that his decision was based on his disapproval of its architectural design, which in his opinion "disfigured the beautiful German townscape."

Fall from power
Author and journalist John Gunther described Streicher as "the worst of the anti-Semites", and his excesses brought condemnation even from other Nazis. Streicher's behaviour was viewed as so irresponsible that he was embarrassing the party leadership; chief among his enemies in Hitler's hierarchy was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who loathed him and later claimed that he forbade his own staff to read Der Stürmer.

Despite his special relationship with Hitler, after 1938 Streicher's position began to unravel. He was accused of keeping Jewish property seized after Kristallnacht in November 1938; he was charged with spreading untrue stories about Göring – such as alleging that he was impotent and that his daughter Edda was conceived by artificial insemination; and he was confronted with his excessive personal behaviour, including unconcealed adultery, several furious verbal attacks on other Gauleiters and striding through the streets of Nuremberg cracking a bullwhip. He was brought before the Supreme Party Court and judged to be "unsuitable for leadership." On 16 February 1940, he was stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to retain the title of a Gauleiter, and to continue publishing Der Stürmer. Hitler remained committed to Streicher, whom he considered a loyal friend, despite his unsavory reputation. Streicher's wife, Kunigunde Streicher, died in 1943 after 30 years of marriage.

When Germany surrendered to the Allied armies in May 1945, Streicher said later, he decided not to commit suicide. Instead, he married his former secretary, Adele Tappe. Days later, on 23 May 1945, Streicher was captured in the town of Waidring, Austria, by a group of American officers led by Major Henry Plitt of the 101st Airborne Division.

Trial and execution
During his trial, Streicher claimed that he had been mistreated by Allied soldiers after his capture. When the German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test was administered by Gustave Gilbert, Streicher had an average IQ (106), the lowest among the defendants. Streicher was not a member of the military and did not take part in planning the Holocaust, or the invasion of other nations. Yet his actions during the war were significant enough, in the prosecutors' judgment, to include him in the trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal – which sat in Nuremberg, where Streicher had once been an unchallenged authority. He complained throughout the process that all his judges were Jews.

Most of the evidence against Streicher came from his numerous speeches and articles over the years. In essence, prosecutors contended that Streicher's articles and speeches were so incendiary that he was an accessory to murder, and therefore as culpable as those who actually ordered the mass extermination of Jews. They further argued that he kept up his antisemitic propaganda even after he was aware that Jews were being slaughtered.

Streicher was acquitted of crimes against peace, but found guilty of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death on 1 October 1946. The judgment against him read, in part:

"For his 25 years of speaking, writing and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as 'Jew-Baiter Number One.' In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution. ... Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity."

He, along with Hans Fritzsche, were the first persons to be indicted for what would later be classified as incitement to genocide, though Fritzsche was acquitted at trial.

During his trial, Streicher displayed for the last time the flair for courtroom theatrics that had made him famous in the 1920s. He answered questions from his own defence attorney with diatribes against Jews, the Allies, and the court itself, and was frequently silenced by the court officers. Streicher was largely shunned by all of the other Nuremberg defendants. He also peppered his testimony with references to passages of Jewish texts he had so often carefully selected and inserted into the pages of Der Stürmer.

Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg Prison in the early hours of 16 October 1946, along with the nine other condemned defendants from the first Nuremberg trial. Göring, Streicher's nemesis, had committed suicide only hours earlier. Streicher's was the most melodramatic of the hangings carried out that night. At the bottom of the scaffold he cried out "Heil Hitler!". When he mounted the platform, he delivered his last sneering reference to Jewish scripture, snapping "Purimfest!" Streicher's final declaration before the hood went over his head was, "The Bolsheviks will hang you one day!" Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, a journalist for the International News Service who covered the executions, said in his filed report that after the hood descended over Streicher's head, he said "Adele, meine liebe Frau!" ("Adele, my dear wife!").

The consensus among eyewitnesses was that Streicher did not receive a quick death from spinal severing. As with at least several others, the bungled hanging was caused by the wilful incompetence of the hangman, Master Sergeant John C. Woods.

Streicher's body, along with those of the other nine executed men and the corpse of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the Isar River.

In literature
Streicher is portrayed in detail, as a criminal psychopath in Philip Kerr's detective novel The Pale Criminal (1990).

title: Julius Streicher


text:
Subterranean London

Subterranean London refers to a number of subterranean structures that lie beneath London. The city has been occupied by humans for two millennia. Over time, the capital has acquired a vast number of these structures and spaces, often as a result of war and conflict.

Water and waste
The River Thames runs west–east through the centre of London. Many tributaries flow into it. Over time these changed from water sources to untreated sewers and disease sources. As the city developed from a cluster of villages, many of the Thames tributaries were buried or converted into canals.

The rivers failed to carry all the sewage of the growing metropolis. The resulting health crisis led to the creation of the London sewerage system (designed by Joseph Bazalgette) in the late nineteenth century. It was one of the world's first modern sewer systems and is still in use today, having been designed to account for the city's continued growth.

The Thames Water Ring Main is a notable large-scale water supply infrastructure, comprising 80 kilometres of wide-bore water-carrying tunnels.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel, due for completion in 2025, will be a deep tunnel 25 km long, running mostly under the tidal section of the River Thames through central London to capture, store and convey almost all the raw sewage and rainwater that currently overflows into the river.

Transport
The London Underground was the world's first underground railway and one of its most extensive. Its construction began in 1860 with the 3.7 mi Metropolitan Railway from Farringdon to Paddington. It opened in 1863, after much disruption from the use of "cut-and-cover" techniques that involved digging large trenches along the course of existing roads, and then constructing a roof over the excavation to reinstate the road surface.

Tube railways, which caused less disruption because they were constructed by boring a tunnel, arrived in 1890, with the opening of the City and South London Railway, a 3.5 mi line from Stockwell to King William Street. It was planned as a cable-hauled railway, but the advent of electric traction resulted in a simpler solution, and the change was made before the cable system was built. It became the world's first electric tube railway. Although the system includes 249 mi of track, only about 45 percent is actually below ground.

Kingsway has an almost intact underground passageway for trams, which is occasionally open to the public.

Tunnels underneath the River Thames range from foot-tunnels to road tunnels and the tunnels of the Underground. The first of these, the Thames Tunnel, designed by Marc Brunel, was the first tunnel known to cross under a navigable river. It ran for 1200 yd from Rotherhithe to Wapping, and opened in 1843. It was used as a pedestrian subway, as the company did not have enough money or finance to build the intended access ramps for horse-drawn traffic. These tunnels were later used by the East London branch of the Metropolitan Railway from Shoreditch to New Cross. It was refurbished in 2011 and became part of the London Overground network.

Several railway stations have cavernous vaults and tunnels running beneath them, often disused, or reopened with a new purpose. Examples include The Old Vic Tunnels, beneath London Waterloo station, and the vaults beneath London Bridge station, formerly utilised by the theatre company Shunt.

Defence
Many underground military citadels were built under London. Few are acknowledged, and even fewer are open to the public. One exception is the famous Cabinet War Rooms, used by Winston Churchill during the Second World War.

During the war, parts of the Underground were converted into air-raid shelters known as deep-level shelters. Some were converted for military and civil defence use, such as the now-disused Kingsway telephone exchange.

Other civil defence centres in London are wholly or partly underground, mostly remnants from the Cold War. Many other subterranean facilities exist around the centre of government in Whitehall, often linked by tunnels.

In December 1980, the New Statesman revealed the existence of secret tunnels linking government buildings, which they claimed would be used in the event of a national emergency. It is believed these tunnels also link to Buckingham Palace. Author Duncan Campbell discussed these facilities in more detail, in the book War Plan UK: The Truth about Civil Defence in Britain (1982). Peter Laurie wrote a book about these facilities, titled Beneath the City Streets: A Private Inquiry into the Nuclear Preoccupations of Government (1970).

Utilities
London, like most other major cities, established an extensive underground infrastructure for electricity distribution, natural gas supply, water supply and telecommunications.

Starting in 1861, Victorian engineers built miles of purpose-built subways large enough to walk through, and through which they could run gas, electricity, water and hydraulic power pipes. These works removed the inconvenience of having to repeatedly excavate highways to allow access to underground utilities.

Abandoned structures
Some underground structures are no longer in use. These include:

 * The London Hydraulic Power Company, set up in 1883, installed a hydraulic power network of high-pressure cast-iron water mains. These were bought by Mercury Communications for use as telecommunications ducts.
 * Sections of the London Pneumatic Despatch Company tunnels linking the General Post Office and Euston Railway station.
 * An extensive private underground railway, the London Post Office Railway, was constructed by the Post Office, fell into disuse and has now become a tourist attraction.
 * Closed London Underground stations are generally not accessible to the public except on London Transport Museum guided tours.

title: Subterranean London


text:
Der Stürmer

Der Stürmer (literally, "The Stormer / Stormtrooper / Attacker") was a weekly German tabloid-format newspaper published from 1923 to the end of World War II by Julius Streicher, the Gauleiter of Franconia, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of Nazi propaganda, and was virulently anti-Semitic. The paper was not an official publication of the Nazi Party, but was published privately by Streicher. For this reason, the paper did not display the Nazi Party swastika in its logo.

The paper was a very lucrative business for Streicher, and made him a multi-millionaire. The newspaper originated at Nuremberg during Adolf Hitler's attempt to establish power and control. The first copy of Der Stürmer was published on 20 April 1923. Der Stürmers circulation grew over time, eventually distributing to a large percentage of the German population, as well as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. The newspaper reached a peak circulation of 486,000 in 1937.

Unlike the Völkischer Beobachter (The Völkisch Observer), the official Nazi Party paper, which gave itself an outwardly serious appearance, Der Stürmer often ran obscene material such as the blood libel and graphic caricatures of Jews, as well as sexually explicit, anti-communist, and anti-monarchist propaganda. As early as 1933, Streicher was calling for the extermination of the Jews in Der Stürmer. During the war, Streicher regularly authorized articles demanding the annihilation and extermination of the "Jewish race". After the war, Streicher was convicted of being an accessory for crimes against humanity, and was executed by hanging.

Circulation
Most of the paper's readers were young people, and people from the lowest strata of German society. Copies of Der Stürmer were displayed in prominent red  (display boxes) throughout the Reich. As well as advertising the publication, the cases also allowed its articles to reach those readers who either did not have time to buy and read a newspaper in depth, or could not afford the expense. In 1927, Der Stürmer sold about 27,000 copies every week. By 1935, its circulation had increased to around 480,000.

Nazi attitudes towards the paper
From the late 1920s, Julius Streicher's vulgar style of propagandism increasingly became a cause of embarrassment for the Nazi Party. In 1936, the sale of Der Stürmer was restricted in Berlin during the Summer Olympics, in an attempt to preserve the Nazi regime's international reputation and prestige. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels tried to completely ban the newspaper in 1938, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach prohibited Hitler Youth members from reading it in Hitler Youth-sponsored hostels and other education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command"). Göring harboured a particularly intense hatred of the paper, especially after it published a libelous article alleging that his daughter Edda had been conceived through artificial insemination. It was only through Hitler's intervention that Streicher was spared from severe punishment.

However, other senior Nazi officials, including Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, chairman of the German Labour Front Robert Ley, and proprietor of the Zentral Verlag (Central Press) Max Amann, whose organization comprised 80% of the German press, endorsed the publication, and their statements were often published in the paper. Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig (now Gdańsk), wrote in 1937:

"With pleasure, I say that the Stürmer, more than any other daily or weekly newspaper, has made clear to the people in simple ways the danger of Jewry. Without Julius Streicher and his Stürmer, the importance of a solution to the Jewish question would not be seen to be as critical as it actually is by many citizens. It is therefore to be hoped that those who want to learn the unvarnished truth about the Jewish question will read the Stürmer."

Hitler considered Streicher's primitive methods to be effective in influencing "the man in the street". Although Streicher and his paper were increasingly isolated in the Nazi party, Hitler continued to support Streicher, and was an avid reader of Der Stürmer. In December 1941, he stated: "Streicher is reproached for his Stürmer. The truth is the opposite of what people say: He idealized the Jew. The Jew is baser, fiercer, more diabolical than Streicher depicted him." In February 1942, he praised the newspaper, by stating: "One must never forget the services rendered by the Stürmer. Now that the Jews are known for what they are, nobody any longer thinks that Streicher libeled them."

Hermann Rauschning, who claimed to be Hitler's "confidant", said in the mid-1930s:

"Antisemitism was beyond question the most important weapon in Hitler's propagandist arsenal, and almost everywhere, it was of deadly efficiency. That was why he had allowed Streicher, for example, a free hand. The man's stuff, too, was amusing, and very cleverly done. Wherever, he wondered, did Streicher get his constant supply of new material? He, Hitler, was simply on thorns to see each new issue of the Stürmer. It was the one periodical that he always read with pleasure, from the first page to the last."

During the war, the paper's circulation suffered because of paper shortages, as well as Streicher's exile from Nuremberg for corruption. More ominously, because of the Holocaust, the people it targeted had begun to disappear from everyday life, which diminished the paper's relevance. Hitler, however, insisted that Streicher receive sufficient support to continue publishing Der Stürmer. The final edition of the newspaper was published in February 1945. The chief editor, Julius Streicher, was tried at Nuremberg after the end of the war, and after being found guilty of being an accessory to crimes against humanity, he was hanged in 1946.

Antisemitic content

According to the American writer Dennis Showalter, "a major challenge of political antisemitism involves overcoming the images of the 'Jew next door' – the living, breathing acquaintance or associate whose simple existence appears to deny the validity of that negative stereotype". The newspaper's lurid content appealed to a large spectrum of readers who were lower class and less-sophisticated. Der Stürmer was known for its use of simple themes that required little thought. The newspaper often gave descriptions of how to identify Jewish people, and included racist political cartoons, including antisemitic caricatures. Besides the graphic depictions, articles often focused on imaginary fears, exaggerations, and perceived behavioral differences between Jews and other German citizens.

After the war, Streicher was tried at the Nuremberg trials. His publishing and speaking activities were a major part of the evidence presented against him. In essence, the prosecutors took the line that Streicher's role in inciting Germans to exterminate Jews made him an accessory to murder, and thus as culpable as those who actually carried out the killing. Prosecutors also introduced decisive and irrefutable evidence that Streicher continued his incendiary articles and speeches when he was well aware that Jews were being slaughtered. Streicher was found guilty of being an accessory for crimes against humanity, and was executed by hanging shortly afterwards.

Antisemitic caricatures
Der Stürmer was known for its virulently antisemitic caricatures, which depicted Jews as ugly characters with exaggerated facial features and misshapen bodies. In his propaganda work, Streicher furthered medieval stereotypes accusing Jews of killing children, sacrificing their bodies, and drinking their blood. The large majority of these drawings were the work of Philipp Rupprecht, known as Fips, who was one of the best-known antisemitic cartoonists of Nazi Germany. Through the adaptation and amalgamation of almost every existing antisemitic stereotype, myth, and tradition, Rupprecht's virulent attacks aimed predominantly at the dehumanization and demonization of Jews. At the bottom of the title page, there was always the motto "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" ("The Jews are our misfortune!"), coined by Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880s. In the nameplate was the motto "Deutsches Wochenblatt zum Kampfe um die Wahrheit" ("German Weekly Newspaper in the Fight for Truth").

Alleged sexual crimes
Stories of Rassenschande, which denoted alleged scandals of Jewish men and German women having sex, were staples of Der Stürmer. Streicher described Jews as sex offenders who were "violators of the innocent, perpetrators of bizarre sex crimes, and ritual murderers", who allegedly performed in religious ceremonies using blood of other humans, usually Christians. Streicher also frequently reported attempts of child molestation by Jews. Der Stürmer never lacked details about sexual intercourse, names, and crimes to keep readers aroused and entertained. These accusations, articles, and crimes printed in Der Stürmer were often inaccurate, and rarely investigated by staff members. In the newspaper's opinion, if a German girl became pregnant by a Jew, the Jew would deny paternity, offer to pay for an abortion, fail to pay child support, or leave for the U.S. Within Der Stürmer, it was not uncommon to read reports of German women aborting their children because they did not want to bring a "Jewish bastard into the world".

Streicher believed in the antisemitic telegony hypotheses of Artur Dinter, whose 1917 best-seller book Die Sünde wider das Blut ("The Sin Against the Blood") claimed that the ejaculation of semen of a Jewish man into the vagina of a "German-blooded" woman was sufficient to change the woman so effectively that all of her future descendants would have "Jewish blood". This hypothesis was rejected by the Nazis in the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws, and was called a "heresy" by the Racial Office of the NSDAP. The official Nazi position stated that "the racial characteristics of a person are determined by heredity".

Accusations of financial crimes
Showalter said: "For Julius Streicher, the Jews' hatred for Christianity was concealed only for one reason: Business." Jewish businessmen were often portrayed as doing almost anything to obtain financial wealth, which included, in his words, "become a usurper, a traitor, a murderer". In the summer of 1931, Streicher focused much of the paper's attention on a Jewish-owned butchery. As an example, when a philanthropic merchant started operating a soup kitchen, Der Stürmer ran articles accusing the business of poisoning the food being served. Der Stürmer criticized and cherrypicked every single price increase and decrease in Jewish shops, as well as their charitable donations, denouncing it as a further form of financial greed. This attack on Jewish benevolence, generosity, and philanthropism received the most public criticism out of all of Der Stürmer's antisemitic propaganda. Its "Letter Box" encouraged the reporting of Jewish illegal acts, while its unofficial style helped prevent suspicion of propaganda, and lent it an air of "authenticity".

title: Der Stürmer