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Douglas History

In the 18th century Kingswood was a small coal mining village where George Whitefield's open-air preaching greatly influenced John Wesley in the founding of Methodism. The construction of a number of chapels, Tabernacle and schools by Whitefield, Wesley, and their associates and followers is held to be one of the factors contributing to Kingswood's growth. Coal mining first brought the Kingswood area to industrial prominence in the late 17th century.

The Douglas Motorcycle Company started making drain covers and lamp posts in but in 1907 the Kingswood company fitted a unique horizontal twin-cyclinder engine into a standard cycle frame.The first model was primitive but by 1910 Douglas were racing and was the start of the company's 20-year domination of the sport. By 1923 Douglas motorcycles held 150 British and world records.

2008 MOTORCYCLE WORKS TO BE REPLACED BY HOMES

Developers want to build hundreds of homes on the former Douglas motorcycle factory site in Kingswood.

The 12-acre plot, which once housed the biggest motorcycle factory in the world, would be bulldozed to make way for between 300 and 350 homes, some of which will be affordable homes for first-time buyers.

Production of the famous Douglas motorcycles in Kingswood ended in 1957 and the buildings where 3,000 people once worked are now used by a number of small businesses.

Douglas Homes (South West) Ltd is preparing to submit a planning application as early as September to South Gloucestershire Council.

Tony Doyle, spokesman for developers LPC (Trull), said Douglas House, which is locally but not nationally listed, would be retained as part of the massive housing development.

The land has already been earmarked for housing by the local authority in its Local Plan so it is only the detail and design of the homes within the planning application that is likely to cause any controversy. The council has already agreed that the land could stand a building capacity of about 75 homes per hectare (2.4 acres).

Councillor Andy Perkins, the Labour group's spokesman on planning, said: "Houses are needed in Kingswood and the land has been designated for housing. What we have got to ensure is that the density is not overstretched, that there is public open space and community facilities.

"A development of this size is going to generate a lot of extra traffic so we've got to make sure the road improvements are in place to cope with the increase.

"The development of the Douglas works is going to happen so we have got to make sure we get it right at the planning stage."

Mr Doyle said the development would include a mix of houses, apartments and flats all built to a minimum of Code 3 for sustainable homes.

The phasing of the house building programme would be timed to fit in with the relocation of businesses currently occupying the site.

Cycle paths and pedestrian walkways will feature in the development, which will be well served by public transport.

Douglas House, once used for offices, would be restored as part of the housing scheme.

Douglas Homes will hold a design workshop for people having an interest in the site to draw up preliminary design ideas. That will be followed with a second workshop and exhibition to give residents living in the area a chance to see the preliminary designs.

Any concerns and suggestions from the public will be considered before a final design is prepared for submitted for planning permission.

Douglas factory site should be saved for local employment

As a piece of South Gloucestershire heritage, people should always know what their benefits may be, and what may be lost to them forever and those to come. For more than 100 years the site has provided employment for Kingswood families.

The buildings are still intact which means that the area has the very last motorcycle factory left in the whole country. Sites that produced machines such as the Norton, BSA, Triumph, AJS, Matchless and many, many more are now lost under acres of new flats and apartments.

How can people afford these when there are no places to work to earn money?

Surely we should now be polluting less and working closer to home?
Kingswood now has no boot and shoe factories, no coal- mining and very shortly the Kleeneze brush works will be gone. My fear is that we will become a nation of paper-pushers. So let's make sure we keep the Douglas factory site for local employment.

Bill Douglas, Cadbury Heath.

Like the Vasco Da Gama Soccer Club building I recently posted, this image was taken on James Street North in Hamilton, Ontario in the "Beasley" District, one of the four original districts to form Hamilton. This area has been known for many years as a tough area and also the poorest (based on per-capita income) area in Canada. However, the area has been steadily cleaning up under the leadership of the local arts and Portuguese communities as well as young professionals seeking affordable housing with character and ready access to the downtown. Because of the large Portuguese community, a number of restaurants catering to the associated ethnic tastes have sprung up. Ventura's is one of them, and at knight its facade, complete with lighted sailing vessel, is one of them. Although the area is not completely out of the woods as far as its recovery is concerned, it has come a long way and is now a wonderful area to visit for good food and fine art. - JW

The image was created from a 3 shot auto bracket (+/-2EV ISO320) using a tripod-mounted Nikon D5000. The Nikon was fitted with an 18-55mm VR lense set at 18mm, f/5.6. The resulting images were processed with Luminance/Qtpfsgui to produce the base HDR image using the setup information embedded in the file name and as shown below. The base HDR image was then loaded into GIMP along with the 3 images used to make the base HDR, and by selective deletion using a soft brush, various parts of the base HDR image were replaced by corresponding elements of the original images. This was done to repair the artifacts arising from HDR processing and tone-mapping, as well as to get a more natural look in certain areas. Once done, the resulting multi-layer adjusted image was flattened, perspective adjustment made to restore verticals to vertical (i.e. correct wide angle distortion), border added, and, scaled to 1024 wide for posting.

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DSC_2988_jamesventura01v05multlayadjpersbordx1024_pregamma_1_mantiuk_contrast_mapping_0.1_saturation_factor_1.2_detail_factor_2
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Qtpfsgui 1.9.3 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.1
Saturation Factor: 1.2
Detail Factor: 2
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PreGamma: 1