Tony Robinson's London Games Unearthed

[mrs_emma_peel]

Tony Robinson's London Games Unearthed
Yesterday ... Friday 13th July 2012 ... 8.00-9.00pm

Fascinating doumentary presented by the excellent Tony Robinson who, using some CGI, charts a time-line of London's Olympic history.

I hadn't realised that 1850 an Olympian Class was started by Dr William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. In 1859, Dr Brookes changed the name to Wenlock Olympian Games. This annual sports festival continues to this day. The Wenlock Olympian Society was founded by Dr. Brookes on 15th November 1860.

One of Dr William Penny Brookes' admirers was Baron Pierre de Coubertin - who was invited to visit the Wenlock Olympian Games ... they became great friends and Dr Brookes encouraged, and passed the baton onto, de Coubertin. In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years. He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee.

This meeting was held from 16 to 23 June 1894, at the Sorbonne University in Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first Olympic Games, to come under the auspices of the IOC, would take place in Athens in 1896.

Sadly, Dr William Penny Brookes died in 1895 just one year before his dream of the first modern international Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is usually credited with founding the Olympics, yet, it was an Englishman - Dr William Penny Brookes who was first - one of the almost forgotten heroes and founders of the modern day Olympic Games.
Emma


One of the country's best loved history broadcasters comes to Yesterday with a brand new one-off documentary that explores the Olympics in a way you've never seen before, in Tony Robinson's London Games Unearthed.

Time Team presenter Tony Robinson embarks on a personal quest to unearth the history behind the area of London that has been regenerated to host the games. Underneath the new stadiums and the new Olympic park, six millennia of history is waiting to be untapped and explored.

With the help of CGI and Tony's trademark storytelling, ancient Britain is brought to life.

He tells the dramatic tale of the Queen of the Iceni tribe - Queen Boudica ... she was stripped, bound and whipped and her three daughters raped by traitorous Roman invaders ... and of Queen Boudica's plan to avenge the betrayal ... and how she unleashed hell upon her Roman conquerers.

He begins his journey in the Olympic Park itself, where the regeneration unearthed some incredible finds. A bronze axe that was buried 6,000 years near to where the Aquatic Centre now stands reveals secrets about every-day life in Bronze Age Britain.

There's also a personal twist when Tony discovers how his own grandparents were impacted by the fallout from the Industrial Revolution and how his father was part of a new spirit of British philanthropy that was born out of East London's slums.

Sources: Yesterday Channel/Wikipedia/DigiGuide/Jonathan Wright The Guardian online

http://uktv.co.uk/yesterday/item/aid...isplayVideo/hi

[CaptainWaggett]

Tony Robinson's London Games Unearthed
Yesterday ... Friday 13th July 2012 ... 8.00-9.00pm

Fascinating doumentary presented by the excellent Tony Robinson who, using some CGI, charts a time-line of London's Olympic history.

I hadn't realised that 1850 an Olympian Class was started by Dr William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. In 1859, Dr Brookes changed the name to Wenlock Olympian Games. This annual sports festival continues to this day. The Wenlock Olympian Society was founded by Dr. Brookes on 15th November 1860.

It's why one the of the strange one-eyed mascot thingies is called Wenlock (the other being Mandeville after Stoke Mandeville where the paralympics started in 1948). Thanks for pointing this one out

[dpgmel]

It's why one the of the strange one-eyed mascot thingies is called Wenlock (the other being Mandeville after Stoke Mandeville where the paralympics started in 1948). Thanks for pointing this one out

Never knew that.

[CaptainWaggett]

They've got their own webpage though frankly, it's a bit creepy

https://mascot-games.london2012.com/

[Mark O]

It's why one the of the strange one-eyed mascot thingies is called Wenlock (the other being Mandeville after Stoke Mandeville where the paralympics started in 1948). Thanks for pointing this one out

I did wonder how their names originated, though I agree with comments made about their 'cyclops' appearance, the eye itself reminds me of 'Hal' in the film 2001-a Space Odyssey, a little too robotic looking to want to take to bed with you (as opposed to a Teddy bear)

[CaptainWaggett]

From the DNB

Brookes, William Penny (1809–1895), surgeon and campaigner for the revival of the Olympic games
by Helen Clare Cromarty
© Oxford University Press 2004–12 All rights reserved

Brookes, William Penny (1809–1895), surgeon and campaigner for the revival of the Olympic games, was born on 13 August 1809 at 4 Wilmore Street, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, the first of the five children of William Brookes (1776–1830), doctor, and his wife, Mary Doughty (1786–1869). After being apprenticed to a Dr R. Barnett at Stourport in Worcestershire in 1825, Brookes studied at the united hospitals of Guy's and St Thomas's, London, in 1827; it is also known that he went to Padua and to Paris in 1829 to further his studies. Brookes returned to Wenlock in 1831 to take up his father's practice following the latter's death; he was made MRCS in 1831, FRCS in 1870, and LSA in 1831. His practice covered a wide rural area of several communities and it is said that he often rode some 70 miles a day to visit his patients.

Brookes was a short, stocky man, his passport stating his height to be 5 feet 2 inches. Nevertheless what he lacked in inches his character made up for in organizational ability, perseverance, energy, and vision. A polymath, Brookes was fluent in French, Greek, and Latin, and was a nationally respected botanist. His many and varied interests, in particular the provision of physical education, were all pursued with relentless enthusiasm. On 18 May 1835 he married Jane Clare Talbot (1811–1885) of Fetters Hall, Tettenhall, Staffordshire, daughter of Thomas Faulkner Talbot and his wife, Jane. At Brookes's death, of his two sons and three daughters only Adeline (1839–1925) survived him; a son, William Brookes (b. 1845), a brilliant student at Oxford, accidentally drowned there in December 1868.

Appointed a justice of the peace and, in 1841, commissioner of roads and taxes, Brookes took an active role in civic life. He was responsible for the refurbishment, in 1849, of the council chamber in Wenlock's beautiful sixteenth-century guildhall, he instigated the building of the corn exchange in the town's high street in 1852, and, ever in touch with progress, he was largely instrumental in bringing gas lighting to the town in 1856 and also the railway, which was officially opened in 1862.

In 1841 Brookes set up the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS), an early kind of lending library for working men, which was later accommodated in the reading rooms above the corn exchange. From this society various sections evolved; in particular a class (later called the Olympian Society: WOS) was set up in 1850 to hold annual games ‘for literary and fine-art attainments, and for skill and strength in athletic exercise’ (W. P. Brookes archives, WOS/1 (1850–76), 135). The games were open to those whom Brookes termed ‘every grade of man’. Initially the sports were a mixture of athletic events, old country sports, and a special event to amuse the spectators. On occasion athletes and spectators numbered several thousand, and building on this success Brookes founded the Shropshire Olympian games (1861) and was instrumental in the formation of the National Olympian Association (1865), both of which were hosted by different towns with the host town financing the games. This was a significant new concept; at that time numerous athletic associations were springing up all over the country and the aim of the National Olympian Association was to lay down regulations and to bring some organization to sports associations under one nationally recognized body. Their first games were held at Crystal Palace in 1866 and attracted over 10,000 spectators. The reaction of the ‘amateur’ sportsmen (principally from the public schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge) was swiftly to set up the Amateur Athletic Club (later Association). Anyone could take part in the AAC games but membership of the club was by invitation only. Brookes kept meticulous records relating to the Olympian societies and his other causes, which can now be found in the archives of Wenlock town council.

Although Brookes had a lifelong admiration for Greece and for the Greek ideal of physical fitness there is no evidence that he ever visited that country. His first known contact with Greece was when he sent a prize of £10 to the Zappas Olympian games in Athens in 1859. From this time he intermittently petitioned the Greek government to re-establish Olympic-styled games. The Greek newspaper The Clio reported, in June 1881, that ‘Dr Brookes, this enthusiastic Philhelline is endeavouring to organise an International Olympian Festival, to be held in Athens’ (Coubertin collection). Political unrest prevented this; nevertheless Brookes continued a lively correspondence with the Greek chargé d'affaires in London, I. Gennadius.

Brookes's persistent campaign for physical education to be made compulsory in schools brought him into contact with Baron Coubertin, who was researching foreign provision of physical education on behalf of the French government. Following Coubertin's visit to the Wenlock Olympian games in 1890 the two men began a correspondence which lasted until Brookes's death. The young aristocrat referred to the octogenarian Brookes as ‘my oldest friend’ and, greatly impressed by his lifelong campaign for a revived Olympics with international participation, initially acknowledged Brookes, in the December 1890 edition of La Revue Athletique, as the pioneer of modern Olympics: ‘If the Olympic Games that Modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives today, it is due, not to a Greek, but to Dr W. P. Brookes’ (W. P. Brookes archives, WOS/2 (1877–95), 221). The congress of the Sorbonne was instigated by Coubertin, in 1894, to establish an Olympic revival; Brookes, listed as an honorary member, was unable to attend, through ill health, and died on 10 December 1895 at his home, 4 Wilmore Street, Much Wenlock, four months before the realization of his dream, the first modern Olympics held in Athens, in April 1896. He was buried at the parish church of Much Wenlock on 13 December.

HELEN CLARE CROMARTY
Sources W. P. Brookes, archives, Corn Exchange, Much Wenlock, minute books 1 and 2, 1850–95, Wenlock town council archives · Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society, vols. 1 and 2, 1841–93, Wenlock town council archives, Corn Exchange, Much Wenlock · W. P. Brookes, personal archive, 1841–68 · V. G. Plarr, Plarr's Lives of the fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, rev. D'A. Power, 2 vols. (1930) · K. B. Jones, The Wenlock branch: Wellington to Craven Arms (1998) · P. Lovesay, The official centenary history of the Amateur Athletic Association (1980) · Bagshaw Directory (1851), 582 · International Olympic Museum, Lucerne, Switzerland, Coubertin Collection IOC · Shrewsbury Chronicle (18 Dec 1868) · M. Furbank, M. Cromarty, and G. McDonald, William Penny Brookes and the Olympic connection (1996) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1896)

Archives International Olympic Museum, Lucerne, Switzerland · Much Wenlock town council, Shropshire, archive incl. herbarium · Shrops. RRC · Wenlock Museum, Much Wenlock, Shropshire




Likenesses photographs, 1880–89, Much Wenlock town council, Shropshire, archive [see illus.]

Wealth at death £3896 18s. 4d.: probate, 7 Feb 1896, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Oxford University Press 2004–12 All rights reserved

Helen Clare Cromarty, ‘Brookes, William Penny (1809–1895)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39187, accessed 13 July 2012]

William Penny Brookes (1809–1895): doi:10.1093/ref:dnb/39187

[Moor Larkin]

Pride the Lion seems a more sane mascot, if a little under-reported.
Seems to have a touch of the New Avengers about him too...

pride-the-lion-01.jpg

[didi-5]

Anyone know if this is being repeated? We were out and missed it

[Steve Crook]

Anyone know if this is being repeated? We were out and missed it

Click on the link at the end of the first post in this thread

Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

Anyone know if this is being repeated? We were out and missed it

If you miss the 6.25 am repeat it's on at 6.00pm on Saturday

[faginsgirl]

If you miss the 6.25 am repeat it's on at 6.00pm on Saturday

It seems to be on a lot! So many channels but so little programming as usual, all repeats,! . But at least this is quality.

I did enjoy it, I always think Tony`s docu`s are fascinating

[CaptainWaggett]

BTW, to give this a Britmovie spin, Much Wenlock is where Gone to Earth was filmed

[Nick Dando]

A small part of Gone to Earth. The rest of the film avoided towns and was filmed in many other rural areas of Shropshire, from Sleap in the north to Pentre, near Chapel Lawn in the south. The Archers used a lot of locations spread over a very wide area.

Nick

[Mark O]

Pride the Lion seems a more sane mascot, if a little under-reported.
Seems to have a touch of the New Avengers about him too...

Attachment 9335

That's more like it, can't take to the other two, a Lion's much more cuddly and appealing (in the metaphoric sense)