Ben Hewitt And Lacrosse

David's Goliath Task

The entrance to Charterhouse is rather understated, so much so that yours truly missed it at the first attempt! Here, there are no triumphal wrought iron gates or large signs shouting its existence; rather surprising, perhaps, for an establishment that is rated in the top six public schools in the UK.

Famous former pupils include the founder of the scout movement, Lord Baden Powell, whose move to leafy Surrey prompted his love of all things countryside; playwright Ben Travers, whom the school's theatre is named after; England cricket captain, Peter May, who once famously, as legend has it, hit a six over the imposing school building, such was his talent; and the original line-up of prog rock band, Genesis, including Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, who began their career in music whilst still pupils.

The school accommodates 795 pupils aged between fourteen and eighteen, of which 135 are girls.

This summer, Charterhouse celebrates its 400th anniversary. Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611, on the site of an old Carthusian monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield, it is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. It moved to its present site just outside Godalming in 1872, after completion of the buildings from stone and sand quarried from the site.

In 1927, the building of the Memorial Chapel was completed to honour the 700 former pupils who had died in action during World War 1. The architect was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who is best known as the designer of the red telephone box.

The original eighty acre site has, over the years, expanded to close to 250 acres comprising eighty acres of woodland, fifty-five acre s of lawns and formal gardens and thirty acres occupied by a nine-hole golf course. The remaining acreage is given over to a stunning array of sports pitches set out in defined areas - Under Green, Lessington, Wilderness, Big Ground, Green, Broom & Lees and Northbrook being the main ones.

Northbrook is the most recent addition (1970s) and here are sited the artificial hockey pitch, the Queen's Sports Centre and the Sir Greville Spratt Athletics Stadium, along with space for three cricket squares, seven football pitches, one lacrosse pitch, two training grids and one rugby pitch.

Insight From The Sightless: The Town That Food Saved by Ben Hewitt

This blog is composed of short reviews of books I have read, dating back to August of 2009 when I began tracking my literary consumption. Though non-fiction will feature prominently, fiction will be chronicled here as well, particularly fantasy and science fiction. As I average six books a week, I hope to someday cover most topics of interest to me and my readers. If you have any recommended reads germane to a particular book, please pass along your recommendation as a comment on that post. This thoughtful, sober piece from Mr. Hewitt is hardly the first, and certainly won't be the last, to investigate the food problem -- I've reviewed several of these efforts --, but it is, perhaps, the most honest and down-to-earth examination of how far North American society has strayed from real food made by real people. It is not a polemic, nor does it offer sweeping solutions to looming catastrophes . It's an exploration of a town, its rise, its fall and its rebirth as something that may well resemble the face of food in the challenging 21st century. Mr. Hewitt, a native of Vermont, applies a journalist's sensibilities to this, his endeavor to sound out the sustainability and scalability of local food . The protagonist of his history is Hardwick, Vermont , a boomtown which thrived on granite. When the quarries dried up, jobs and paychecks vanished, plunging the small town into an extended period of hardship and obscurity. It's subsequent rebirth seems due in part to the legacy of the back-to-the-earth movement of the 1960s and 1970s which helped to create, in Hardwick, one of the largest, most successful food co-ops in America. Since then, other localvor businesses have taken root, producing soy beans, cheese, milk and meat for distribution to local citizens, for the tables of local restaurants and for the truckbeds of interstate commerce. Mr. Hewitt, himself an interested party in the movement, interviews the key figures in all these businesses, granting his readers an inside look at the personalities and the passions which shape and drive local food which is powering Hardwick's resurgence. Mr. Hewitt does a wonderful job illustrating the economic challenges that plague local food. He demonstrates how oversized egos and their outlandish claims have damaged the movement's credibility. But it is his talent for capturing the personalities involved that sets his chronicle apart.

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