mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Dec 21, 2007 23:46:40 GMT -5
What is it? A triple challenge.  Mickey |
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Post by Michael Fraley on Dec 22, 2007 0:56:54 GMT -5
Outdoor commode? Horse trough? Bowling ball deposit center? I give up!
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Post by GeneW on Dec 22, 2007 6:26:20 GMT -5
A little too public to be a bidet. Hmmm. It's a stumper Mickey. Could be: flower planter, fountain, or maybe a contoured seat for a very broad-beamed pedestrian...
Gene
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Post by kiev4a on Dec 22, 2007 11:39:41 GMT -5
Maybe a watering trough for horses on one side and a place to give them a loittle grain on the back side?
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Post by herron on Dec 22, 2007 14:29:17 GMT -5
Perhaps a birdbath for pteradactyls? But you rarely see those in the city anymore..........  |
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Post by doubs43 on Dec 22, 2007 14:50:42 GMT -5
Mickey, I can't say that I've ever seen anything quite like it. My guess is either a horse watering trough or some sort of fountain. Whatever it is, it appears to be a quality casting.
Walker
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Dec 25, 2007 10:26:34 GMT -5
Long, long ago when I was a child circa 1930' & 40's, numbers of these beautiful cast iron devices, all of them painted a dark sap green, although not numerous, were to be found at the curb of busy thoroughfares throughout Toronto.
Yes. they were horse troughs. The large basin being for horses. But there was also a fountain for people on the opposite side and the smallest basin below the fountain was for pets. Occasionally some sparrows would share the trough with a horse.
It was not at all uncommon to see all four species quenching their thirst at the same time in this peacable kingdom.
The fountains had no off/on controls. The water ran all the time and a drink of that delicious, achingly cold water on a hot day in midsummer was a cheap luxury never to be forgotten.
The one pictured is the only extant one of which I am aware. It is on King St. in front of a small park next to St. James Cathedral. It is now, sadly, quite dry.
Mickey
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Post by GeneW on Dec 25, 2007 12:13:28 GMT -5
Mickey, I'd never have guessed. Good puzzle for us all. Thanks!
Gene
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Post by doubs43 on Dec 25, 2007 15:35:26 GMT -5
Mickey, thanks for the explaination. That's a very interesting bit of Canadian lore and I hope you've taken it from every angle to preserve the memory.
Walker
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 25, 2007 18:08:14 GMT -5
Mickey,
I half-guessed at a horse trough but it didn't seem large enough. Of course, now you say it was continuously running, it makes sense.
The horse troughs I remember were much larger stone affairs, about four feet long. Some of them had a lower smaller trough for dogs, but not all that many. I don't remember how they were kept filled. They were often donated and maintained by a moneyed family, or a company, and had an engraving in the stone to say so, plus a date. Most dates I remember were before 1900. There was still a sprinkling of horse and cart traffic in the 1930s despite the relentless take-over by motor vans.
I also remember a few, but not many, pedestrian drinking points with the water supply controlled by a spring-loaded lever. The early ones had drinking cups made of lead, of all things, hanging on a chain. In the later 1930s there were a few more hygenic ones where pressing the lever brought up a small fountain of water for drinking.
The horse trough I used to pass on my way to my first school, in 1933 and 1934, was donated by a 'landed gentry' family with an estate about five or six miles away in Surrey. I don't remember the name, but it was something like Hatfield or Hadfield.
I haven't seen one of these stone horse troughs in the street for ages and ages, but I believe some were moved to open-air museums.
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Post by Rachel on Dec 25, 2007 18:17:07 GMT -5
The horse troughs I remember were much larger stone affairs, about four feet long. Some of them had a lower smaller trough for dogs, but not all that many. There are still a few stone troughs around but none working as far as I know. The last one I saw was in a car park in Bodmin, Cornwall donated, unusually, by Prince Chula of Siam who owned an estate locally. pmsa.cch.kcl.ac.uk/BL/CO59.htm describes it as a "Dog trough". |
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Dec 25, 2007 19:03:10 GMT -5
Peter, The horsey part is about 4' long and 2' wide.  Although this one doesn't work you might notice, in the first photo, how some thouhgtful soul placed it close to the lovely yellow dog toilet (Loo) (aka fire hydrant) thus creating a homey atmosphere for our pets' enjoyment and relief. Mickey |
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 25, 2007 19:33:00 GMT -5
Rachel,
Just to put Prince Chula into context, in the years between the wars, Siam, now Thailand, was very pro-British, and Prince Chula (full name Prince Chula Chaakrabongse) came to Englnd as the legal guardian of his younger cousin Prince Birabongse Bhanutej Bhanubandh, who was sent to England in 1927, aged thirteen, for his education. They both stayed here, married English society women and made their homes here until the 1950s, with estates in Cornwall. Even after returning to Siam they maintained their houses here, as well as villas in France, and spent a lot of time in England. Both were immensely wealthy.
Prince Birabongse became a very successful racing driver, racing under the name B. Bira, and the cousins ran the White Mouse racing team, competing as private entrants in most of the major European motor races in the late 1930s and after the war till the 1950s when motor racing became dominated by the works teams.
PeterW
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Post by Rachel on Dec 26, 2007 4:34:42 GMT -5
Thank you Peter. You are a fountain of knowledge. I have, somewhere, a photo of the "dog trough" in Bodmin. Must try and dig it out. It was donated in memory of Prince Chula's own dogs.
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 26, 2007 9:53:09 GMT -5
Rachel,
Nice compliment, Rachel, thanks, but only partly true. I've got a reasonably good memory for outlines of things I've read, though the search and retrieve function for details doesn't work as well as it used to. But if a bell tinkles I look in my extensive files, AKA piles of cardboard boxes full of old mags, brochures, newspaper clippings and generally trivial info. Junk, but sometimes useful junk in the days when I was freelancing.
Trouble is I filled so many boxes over the past 40 years or so that I'm fast running out of places to store them and it sometimes takes me ages to find what I'm looking for. This time I struck lucky in the second box. One day (yeah, all pigs fuelledand ready to fly!) I'll perhaps index them. What I really need is an archivist, but classifying all that stuff would probably drive him/her mad within a week!
However, I've got only about a tenth of what a friend who died some 20 years ago used to have. He was an old Hungarian by the name of Horvath who kept a three-storey shop called Old Books and Ephemera, each room crammed from floor to ceiling with shelves of everything from old encyclopedias to magazine adverts, matchbox labels and cigarette cards. With today's scanning and repro equipment he could have made a couple of fortunes on the internet. When he died his daughter sold the lot to an agency that specialised in bygone info for writers of 'How We Used to Live' books and researchers making TV documentaries. I still miss being able to go over to his place and browse.
PeterW
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