Duane Bozarth wrote:
Bob Martin wrote:

in 1222883 20050727 215409 Duane Bozarth wrote:

I recall last time I was in Rochester, Kent, England that the "new"
touristy attraction was Dickens and the "new" castle was roughly 1100 as
opposed to the "old" castle ruins from which it was built. And, there
are places where the first Roman wall are still visible dating from
roughly AD70 or so, if I recall correctly.

A few miles from me is Portchester Castle. The outer walls are early Roman
and intact.

http://www.castleuk.net/castle_lists...stercastle.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~midgley/porchester.html

But stuff in Rome, like the Colisseum, puts it to shame!
Then there are the pyramids ...

Oh, certainly...only comment was that for a Yank, particularly one from
the middle which was the latest portion of the US to be settled so that
anything over about 150 is "ancient", the actual "hands-on" of even the
14-15th century stuff is pretty mind-blowing. I got a real kick from
the wooden beams, columns, and joinery in the old houses and
office/factory buildings such as the one Dave's described...

(Dickens was born in Portsmouth, a stone's throw from Portchester.)

And, similarly to Lincoln/Washington in the US, appears to have lived
and/or slept/written/lunched all over the whole of SE England...

I lived for a time in an old farmhouse in the Hudson River Valley in
NY. Built in 1839, and very interesting for a variety of things...this
was not ye olde fancy estate, but a house that was built after the barn
was done (barn was framed in pegged m&t, while the house was nailed
with cut nails). Low ceilings, single layer pine floorboards--many of
them 20+" wide.

But there are houses in the Stockade area of Schenectady, where I
worked back in the late '60s, that were put up in the latter 1600s,
IIRC. Lots of early 1700s structural work, too.

150 years is not old, even in the U.S. Go all the way to California and
some of those old Spanish missions are, in fact, fairly old.

Sure, we don't have 1000 year old castle ruins, but, then, my ancestors
back in that era, at least the ones that came from this side of the
Atlantic, used skin tents which do not last at all well. Not much left
but some handmade axes and knives. Without the wooden hafts they
started with.

But I'd surely like to view some of those very old farms. Not too
interested in the pyramids. Not exactly human scale, IMO, designed by
people with overweening egos to be built by slave labor. It does tend
to remind one of modern politics, in some ways. For those who doubt it,
check out early '60s and '70s photos of downtown Albany against those
of the current year Rockefeller's downtown.