When you visit a person’s or company’s website, it may be because you wish to contact that person or company, in which case you will look for a link labelled something like “contact details”. In my case, there is a link labelled “Contact me” in the sidebar.

I provide three ways you can contact me:

1. a link which should start your email client with my contact email address loaded in the “To” field;
2. an email address that you can copy and paste into your email client if method 1 does not work for you; and
3. a contact form.

Contact forms are very popular because their use avoids revealing the person’s or company’s email address to spammers and other potential abusers. (The email address I give is an alias which I can replace if spammers get hold of it.)

When I wrote my contact page, I wanted to add a form because many peope who have contacted me from my old blog did so via the contact form and it therefore seems a popular choice. However, since I first started blogging with WordPress, there have been many changes to the platform’s software and, search as I might, I could not find a contact form for this blog.

Well, I could find one, called Contact Form 7, but that comes as a plugin and you cannot use plugins with a free WordPress account – you have to upgrade to a paid account.

My next attempt was to look online to see whether I could find a free contact form that could be linked to the blog using simple HTML code (WordPress does not allow you to use scripting languages such as Javascript). There are such forms but their use seems very complicated and once you link to an external site, you are never sure quite what use they are making of your blog – click-through advertising might be the least of your worries.

So I had an idea: what if I were to copy whatever code I used for the contact form on my old blog and pasted it into this blog? Surely, it could not be that simple?

Well yes, it is just that simple. I copied the code and – voilà! – there was the contact form! I tested it and it worked!

Why did it work? I investigated further and discovered why I could create a contact form so easily and in a way that no one on all the websites I had visited seems ready to admit to. So, if you have a free WordPress.com blog and want a simple, no-hassle way to create a contact form, here is how you do it.

Start by looking at this website: https://en.support.wordpress.com/shortcodes/

There you will be introduced to the wonderful world of “shortcodes”. There are very many of these, for all kinds of purposes. The contact form is some way down the list but you will find it – look for “contact-form”.

How do you use it? Well. note that beside it is a link promising “Full instructions” and that should be all that you need. There are various options for the layout of the form and fields to enter. To see what a very simple one looks like, click on “Contact me” in this blog’s sidebar.

In my previous post, I mentioned the New River, a grand project conceived and carried through by Sir Hugh Myddelton (1560-1631).

Well, here is Sir Hugh or, at least, a statue of him, erected as a memorial in 1862. A plaque on the rear tells us that the statue (of Sicilian marble) was presented by the MP for Finsbury, Sir Samuel Morton Peto. The granite plinth was financed by voluntary subscription and a grant from Islington Vestry. The plaque omits the name of the sculptor, John Thomas.

Although the memorial is now protected by railings, it was originally conceived, appropriately enough, as a drinking fountain. You may be able to make out the two bowls guarded by a pair of putti.

The memorial is now a Grade II listed building.

The memorial is sited on the pavement at the south end of Islington Green, a pleasant green space that also accommodates Islington War Memorial which, strangely, takes the firm of a stone ring leaning against a stone plinth.

To the north of the Green runs an open passageway linking Upper Street and Essex Road. The passageway is home to a couple of eateries and a medium-sized Waterstones bookshop.

Above the shop at second-floor level, one can see a plaque indicating that this was the site of Collins Music Hall from 1863 to 1958.

In 1863, Sam Collins leased the premises at the rear of a pub for his music hall. Sam remained in charge only for a couple of years or so but his project was a success and continued operating under his name.

The façade as we see it today dates from a rebuilding of the premises in 1897. Nothing daunted, the music hall continued until it was finally destroyed by a fire in 1958. Apart from a couple of minor traces, the façade is all the remains of Collins and his music hall. Everything behind the façade was rebuilt.

Sir Hugh Myddelton and Sam Collins were two very different characters with very different preoccupations but, nevertheless, both left their names inscribed in the history of Islington, both contributing to its life in their own way.

Claremont Square leads off Pentonville Road at its highest point, a short distance west from the Angel, Islington. London’s Georgian squares typically comprise four rows of houses forming a rectangle enclosing a park or garden in the centre. Claremont Square encloses, not a garden, but a reservoir.

The first reservoir was constructed in 1709 and was open to the sky. It was placed at this point so that it could provide water to the surrounding district which lies at a lower level.

The above photo shows a partial view of the present reservoir. This one is covered over and was built to replace the open pond in 1855-6.

The water for the reservoir was originally supplied by pumping it up from the New River Head. This was the terminus of Sir Hugh Myddelton’s New River which opened in 1613 to bring water from Hertfordshire to an increasingly thirsty London.

The New River still exists though much of it has been covered over as the urban area spread around, and sometimes over, it.

These days, the reservoir is supplied from the Thames Water Ring Main. There is an access point for this down the hill at the New River Head where some of the old buildings still exist in what has been designated a conservation area.

As you can perhaps see, the reservoir is surrounded by railings preventing public access. This means that this small area serves an important secondary function as an urban wildlife refuge. Birds and squirrels can go about their business unmolested and I once saw a fox atop the hump.

It is curious how few people are even aware that there is a reservoir here.

If you, like me, are sometimes intrigued by place names in Britain, their often eccentric spelling and counterintuitive pronunciations, you may have tried to research their origins and history, whether in books or online.

Sites such as Wikipedia and those of local history groups often provide answers to your questions but quite often such a search proves fruitless. In any case, it is good to have a reliable starting point.

By “reliable”, I mean a source that can be trusted to be accurate. Too often, the “etymologies” you find online are highly misleading when not completely fictitious. One should always check multiple sources but even this is no guarantee as online contributors are notorious for copying one another without bothering to check whether what they are copying is correct.

My favourite starting point in searching for the etymology of a place name is A Dictionary of British Place Names by A.D. Mills (ISBN 9780199609086).

This modestly-sized paperback contains a surprisingly large number of names (over 17,000 according to the blurb on the back).

Names are arranged alphabetically, as you would expect. The individual entries are expressed in a terse note-style language but the meaning is always clear. Where the derivation is known, the original words in Anglo-Saxon, ancient British dialects, Norse, etc. are given together with their meanings. Where a name has evolved through several versions, these are given, referred to the written source (e.g. Domesday Book) where they are found.

Discovering what a place name meant in the language of those who first named it can give fascinating insights into the history of the place and its importance to the people who lived there. This book is a valuable guide to this discovery.

In honour of our last day in Bristol, the sun is shining and there is (so far) no hint of rain. We have tickets for the 13:25 train and so we can still spend a little time here. The only inconvenience is that we will have to take out bags everywhere with us.

Having packed, we left the apartment keys, as instructed, in the mailbox in the entrance hall and made our way to the nearby Caffè Nero for breakfast.

We then set out for a final ramble.

I like these rather Dickensian-looking buildings:

We went for a bus ride to see what there was to see. Bristol buses are rather uncomfortable, especially when you have your luggage with you, so I was glad to disembark.

This is Bourdaux Quai. You can catch the river ferry here.

Beside the quay runs an arcade when there are market stalls as well as bars and eateries of various kinds. We stopped off for a coffee break.

Despite the earlier promise, the weather broke and it began raining. So we were not sorry to take the bus to…

…the Chateau-esque Temple Meads Station.

We just had enough time to have lunch in the minuscule cafe called The Rest.

With 40 minutes or so to spare we passed through the ticket barrier and retired to Bonapartes (no apostrophe) Cafe Bar, as we did when we first arrived.

Looking up the live departures board on our mobiles, we saw that our train would depart from platform 15 and so we now made our way thither.

And here we are, in our reserved seats awaiting departure.

Thus ends our brief Bristol jaunt but we shall no doubt return one of these days.

Landscape, as seen from the train. Photo by Tigger

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