Dine under the Dome
QUESTION What is the story of the impressive Devonshire Dome?
The Devonshire Dome is the largest unsupported ceiling in europe.
In the late 18th century, Buxton Crescent hotel in Derbyshire was built by William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, to take advantage of a natural thermal spring.
The Duke commissioned architect John Carr to design a stable block with lodging. Stables for 120 horses were built around an open exercise yard.
In 1859, the 6th Duke of Devonshire granted part of the stables to charity and it became the Buxton Baths and Devonshire hospital Charity. The hospital was for the sick poor from the cotton towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
By 1881, the entire building was a hospital. It was decided to convert the stables to hold 300 beds, with space maximised by creating a dome to cover the original exercise yard.
Robert Rippon Duke, a local, self-taught architect, came up with the ambitious scheme to redesign the building. his plan was to enclose the central courtyard with a huge, slate-clad steel dome 154 ft across and supported by 22 steel arms.
For two decades, it held the record as the world’s largest unsupported dome. It easily surpasses the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral (112ft), the Pantheon (141ft) and St Peter’s Basilica in Rome (138 ft).
The renamed Devonshire Royal hospital was Britain’s only centre for hydropathic treatment (water cure) until its closure in 2000.
In 2001, it became a campus for the University of Derby. The dome is used for conferences, events and weddings. At its centre, Foucault’s pendulum is sometimes suspended to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.
Wendy Trussell, Swadlincote, Derbys.
QUESTION Is it against French law to name a pig Napoleon?
DESPITE this claim being widely circulated, it is not true.
Article 224 in the French Penal Code of 1810 allowed for punishment of ‘any outrage committed by words, gestures or threats upon a ministerial officer, agent or depositary of the public force’. The code was revised in 1994 and France has shown it is prepared to tolerate public mockery of political and religious figures as part of freedom of expression.
The myth that it is illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon probably originated with the publication of Animal Farm in France in 1947.
Berkshire boar Napoleon is the leader of the pigs, but publisher O. Pathe decided this could be seen as insulting and changed the name to Cesar.
The second edition published by Gallimard followed suit. It was not until 1981 that French publishers allowed Orwell’s original name.
Naming a pig Napoleon is scarcely subversive. It suggests admiration for the emperor’s organisational skills and military leadership.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex.
QUESTION When did men start to shave and what did they use?
THERE is evidence of shaving from the late Neolithic period, about 4,000BC. Implements included flint knives and sharpened stones. Tools became more refined for ritual shaving.
It is often claimed cave paintings from between 100,000 and 30,000 years ago depict hairless humans.
It has been suggested they used clamshells for plucking or flint, obsidian shards or sharks’ teeth for scraping. But humans are not depicted in sufficient detail in cave art to be seen as clean shaven. We do know blades were used by Stone Age humans in Africa up to 71,000 years ago. They were made from silcrete, a rock that must be heated in fire in order for it to be flaked into a sharp edge.
Flint daggers from the Neolithic period are found throughout western europe. early examples from burial mounds in Ireland date to between 4,000BC and 3,600 BC. These often had a depression in the blade suggesting the object had been dragged across the jawbone.
Ritual shaving began with the dawn of civilisation. From 3,000 BC, Sumerian men were clean-shaven, using copper blades. This may have been for hygiene or a way to distinguish friend from foe.
The Ancient egyptians believed body hair was unhygienic. Men and women also shaved their heads and wore wigs in public. They used circular blades — like small scythes made of bronze — with stubble rubbed away using pumice stones.
The 4th century BC king Alexander the Great was clean-shaven, likening himself to the demigod heracles. he ordered his men to shave their beards so the enemy would have nothing to grab on to.
The Romans shaved with a novacila — a block of iron with finger holes that looks like a knuckle duster — and finished off with a scrape by a pumice stone.
Jonathan Wilson, Stroud, Glos. n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.