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About "Daisyfield"The curious story of the domain name of this website |
This page is unrelated to the main contents of the Daisyfield.com website. But if you enjoy unique collections of interconnected factoids, read on!
Photo: Municipal website, Blackburn with Darwen, England, visited July, 2008
When you start a website, the first thing is to register a domain name. I chose the domain name daisyfield.com because I thought it would be easy to remember, because it evokes a pleasant image of a field of flowers—and, because it was available!
Later, I used Google to compile a list of places, organizations, products, etc. that have used the word "Daisyfield" as part of their name. The following items are just a part of that list.
A Google search for "Daisyfield" indicates that the greatest geographical concentration of the name "Daisyfield" (all one word) occurs in Lancashire, England. Like the flower that it references, the name "Daisyfield" has spread to and taken root in many locations in Lancashire.
In the industrial city of Blackburn, Lancashire, there is a district which has been known for centuries as Daisyfield. Streets named Daisyfield Road and Daisy Street run through this area. In Blackburn are found the Daisyfield Swimming Pool, the Daisyfield Primary School, the Daisyfield Play and Community Centre, etc. Formerly there was a factory in Blackburn named the Daisyfield Mill.
Photo: Wikipedia.org article on Daisyfield Viaduct, visited July, 2008 The city of Bury in Greater Manchester, England contains a former railroad bridge named the Daisyfield Viaduct, and also is the location for the Daisyfield Dam. The viaduct dates from the 19th century, and provided a crossing for trains over the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal and the River Irwell. Daisyfield Viaduct is now used only by pedestrians and bicyclists. The Daisyfield Dam was built in the 1970's as part of the process of closing the canal and redeveloping the canal's right-of-way.
Bury also was the site of a 19th-century textile factory, the Daisyfield Mill.
Several businesses in or near Bury have names containing the word "Daisyfield". Daisyfield Environmental Cleaning Company is based in Bury. Not far from Bury, in the town of Oldham, is a pub named the Daisyfield Inn. This establishment was the site of a maggot race on 10-Sept-2005.
The English painter and astronomer John Brett (1831-1902) built in 1887 a house that he named Daisyfield, on Putney Heath Road, Putney, in SW London, England. Brett's design for Daisyfield was highly unusual. The house was of a single story, laid out horizontally in the shape of a cross like a church, and was originally constructed without fireplaces and without interior doors (in place of doors there were archways that could be closed by drapery). An astronomical observatory in the form of a tower containing an 11-inch Browning reflector was either part of the house or nearby.
The children's author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), creator of Peter Rabbit, visited Brett in the Daisyfield house on April 6, 1895. On this occasion, Brett had invited a "considerable company" of friends to view his large new painting, The Isles of the Sirens. In her diary, Beatrix Potter praised the painting, but called the house a "curiosity". She learned that Brett and his wife slept in a room called the "Lady Chapel". In British church architecture, a Lady Chapel is a part of a church dedicated to the worship of the Virgin Mary. You often find it behind the altar, sometimes in an extension of the chancel. Thus, in the Daisyfield house, the Lady Chapel may have been a room forming the eastern extremity of the house, at the "top" of the cruciform floor plan. Such a room might enjoy a significant amount of solar heating—useful in a house with no fireplaces!
Brett was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters. His most famous painting is The Stonebreaker, a work which realistically depicts a young man breaking up rocks with a hammer. Brett frequently painted the sea and seacoasts, and astronomical subjects.
After Brett's death, the Daisyfield house became for 20 years the home of Beatrice May Pinney Reed. She was the statuesque (6-foot tall) mistress of London actor and theatrical producer Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917), and had six illegitimate children by him. The youngest of these children was sports journalist Peter Reed (1911-?), the father of movie actor Oliver Reed (1938-1999). Another of the children raised in Daisyfield was Carol Reed (1906-1976), movie actor and director.
According to Madeleine Bingham, biographer of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the Daisyfield house no longer exists. It was torn down to make room for apartment buildings.
"Daisyfield" is the name of a decorative pattern used in china plates etc. manufactured by Royal Doulton Ltd. from 1979 to 1984. For further information and photos see replacements.com. Other china manufacturers have also used "Daisyfield" as a pattern name.
Daisyfield is the name of a small crossroads town and rural area in central Zimbabwe, about 40 km southwest of Gweru on the highway from Harare to Bulawayo. In the area are a hill, a farm, and a railroad siding all named Daisyfield. See details on the fallingrain.com website. For a satellite view on Google Maps click here.
The company Daisy Field USA Inc. is the United States branch of a Chinese textile manufacturing company, and owns the domain name daisyfield.net. (Daisy Field USA has no connection with the daisyfield.com website.)