Reel around the Fountain Traditional Cache
dancingdogs: Afraid the cache site is getting too smelly. Will try to place a new cache in the neighbourhood. Thanks for everyone who has visited in the last three years. / DD
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Apologies in advance, but it seems that the area behind the fountain is being used as a lavatory. You do not have to delve around at ground level. If this continues, I will archive the cache.
Small, black, magnetic bison tube, at a memorial to a former newspaper proprietor on the edge of one of the garden squares in the Portman Estate.
The cache is located beside (not on) a memorial erected in 1862/3 by Mrs Byrne in memory of her husband, William Pitt Byrne, a former proprietor of the Morning Post newspaper who was clearly a fine and upstanding fellow (read the inscription).
The fountain is Grade II listed. The technical details of the listing are as follows:
“TQ 2781 SE CITY OF WESTMINSTER BRYANSTON SQUARE, W1 54/25 William Pitt Byrne Memorial Fountain G.V. II Memorial drinking fountain at south end of square garden. Erected 1862. Painted stone. Heaped 'rock' rubble base to shell basin from which rises fountain proper consisting of acanthus leaf plinth to bombe-faced pedestal with angle consoles and crowning urn finial.”
The Morning Post was founded in 1772. It employed some famous writers, including Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, to increase its status and its circulation. By 1855 there were ten newspapers published in London. The Times, at seven pence, was the most expensive and had a circulation of 10,000. Its main rival, the Morning Post, cost five pence. Both papers were badly hit by the arrival of the one penny Daily Telegraph and in 1937 the Morning Post was purchased by Sir James Berry, the owner of the Daily Telegraph. Berry originally intended to publish it as a separate newspaper but sales were so poor that the two papers were soon amalgamated.
For a history of the Portman Estate, take a look at the Estate’s website (www.portmanestate.co.uk).
May be a little tricky to manoeuvre a wheelchair at GZ.
Please replace exactly where found.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
6 b'pybpx vs lbh'ir tbg lbhe onpx gb gur ebnq.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures