Shadows of a Forgotten World

Across Great Britain is a network of benchmarks.  There used to be about half a million benchmarks, but as they have become obsolete, about half have disappeared.  The first primary leveling in the UK was carried out in 1841-60, the second in 1912-21, and the third in 1951-56. The horizontal bar above the arrow denotes a calcuated and known height or altitude in relation to other Odnance Survey marks across the UK. The datum for mainland Great Britain is mean sea level at Newlyn. They were used for map making before the advent of GPS. This one is on a pillar outside the Corn Exchange building in Leeds These are in Bibury  

In addition to its abundance of beautiful architecture, famous colleges and courtyards, spires, museums, and canals, Oxford also has its fair share of lovely boot scrapers. In a quiet residential area, I stumbled across a long street filled with boot scrapers  —  almost every one with a unique shape. But they were found all over, in the colleges and in other residential neigborhoods. Above this boot scraper is a handle Matching door and boot scraper There used to be door here...

I first heard of anti-toilets from an article about urine deflectors in London. Since then I have come across them in Austria  and Prague, and possibly a curious indoor one in Lviv . In my recent short visit to London, I came across this set of anti-toilets.

England's ghost signs, or fading brick ads, are the most famous and numerous. There is a website Ghostsigns dedicated to them (above all in England, but also around the world) and on Facebook there are many groups dedicated to these old signs. Suprisingly I didn't come across that many during my trip, but here are a few. Manchester Leeds York London Oxford (faux ghost sign, advertsing a bar)