And Did Those Feet

Tunnel Boat Trips from London Canal Museum

2013-06-15T10:33:00.001+01:00

the Tunnel was built in 1820 - sadly without a towpath - which is really annoying for all the cyclists wishing to travel safely from Islington to Camden.

Tunnel Boat Trips from London Canal Museum

William Morris Gallery wins Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year | Culture | The Guardian

2013-06-11T12:34:00.001+01:00

This is a surprise but I do think it has made the place a really good visit - not entirely sure I felt I was in Morris's home but then they avoided the option of creating a pastiche, and museum, park and cafe are really well worth a visit
William Morris Gallery wins Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year | Culture | The Guardian

Jane Austen, and getting wet

2013-06-11T12:29:00.001+01:00

Jane Austen was right: Her characters were known for falling ill... but historians say 19th century people WERE prone to disease | Mail Online

Other articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10105843/Solved-Why-Jane-Austens-characters-get-ill-from-the-rain.html

http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/science/whats-on/2013/pride-prejudice-and-the-doctor/

http://www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/people/profile/?personid=1765

Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy Tour

2013-06-11T12:24:00.000+01:00

I have just received a most gratifying email from one of the people on my Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy Tour

It says:

'I've sent off a rave review of your knowledge and guiding skills to Road Scholar and ordered two of your books. I'm appreciative of Road Scholar choosing you as our literary mentor on the Literature on Site southwest England trip recently completed.

What is most impressive from my point of view is that it is from a professor of English and of Women's Studies '

The tour takes in Steventon, Bath, Wincester, and Chawton.

The Hardy Section is based in Dorchester and visits the Birthplace, Max Gate, Stinsford, Puddleton, Sherborne, Marnhull, Sturminster Newton, Maiden Castle, Maumbury Rings and Dorchester.

In between we spend a couple of days with Agatha Christie in Torquay, and on Dartmoor with Sherlock Holmes. We end with a Dickens and Holmes Day in London

Exhausting but very rewarding.

Temple of Mithras - British Pathé

2013-06-08T23:42:00.001+01:00

Showing the Temple of Mitras 1954

ROMAN TEMPLE IN THE CITY aka ROMAN TEMPLE IN LONDON - British Pathé

Jane Austen's Bath

2013-05-23T06:01:00.003+01:00

I was asked to keep a blog of my literary tour. So here goes.
Jane Austen's Bath. She didn't like the place - she would find it weird that we now revere it on her behalf. The local Waterstone's has a long shelf stuffed with books based on the afterlife of her characters. What Darcy, Elizabeth, Caroline, Emma etc did next. There is a Jane Austen attraction in a house which she never lived in.

I'm up at 5, as I cannot sleep in my big Hilton Room, because we seem to have decided to sell our house, and I have a Lecture on Gilpin, Austen and Landscape to revise (or remember!). Did I mention that there were no biscuits in this Hotel room?

Dynamic Map of Europe: 1000 AD to present day

2013-05-16T09:22:00.001+01:00

Watch Empires ebb and flow!

This is really interesting - as my friend Jon says it needs a time display and it needs a slow down button
LiveLeak.com - Map of Europe: 1000 AD to present day

BBC News - The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't

2013-04-22T12:25:00.001+01:00

This is a very interesting article about the inventor of the Tin Can which took place in 1813 in Bermondsey. The article shows that the invention was a development of pioneering work in France.

BBC News - The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't

A jaunt into Jane Austen country

2013-03-17T17:18:00.001Z

Some interesting places to visit near Jane Austen's House Chawton
Britain Magazine | The official magazine of Visit Britain | Best of British History, Royal Family,Travel and Culture - A jaunt into Jane Austen country

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter

2013-03-17T16:10:00.001Z

I am attempting to link my facebook, twitter and blog accounts. This is a test

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter

Products through the ages - slideshow | Life and style | The Guardian

2013-03-17T10:09:00.001Z

Products through the ages - slideshow | Life and style | The Guardian

Ekarv text | Mouseion: artists' reflections on museums

2013-03-06T15:36:00.001Z

These are the 'Ekarv' Guidelines for writing readable texts.

Generally, the principles seem to make sense, though too strict and too unlike real English

Ekarv text | Mouseion: artists' reflections on museums: Guidelines

One idea expressed per line

Line breaks placed at natural pauses in a sentence

No more than 3 lines per sentence

Simple sentence structures, no complex clauses

Use active forms of the verb where possible

Conversational rhythms, easily spoken out loud

Maximum 52 characters per line (including spaces)

Maximum 8 lines per paragraph

Maximum 15 lines for labels, 22 lines for panels (including spaces)

This framework provides a strict discipline for writing and is initially quite difficult to work within. It also has significant implications for design, as the placing and spacing of text is absolutely crucial and the short line length imposes a portrait format on the final label. It is therefore extremely important to work closely with designers from the beginning of the process.

Grotesque Mummy Head Reveals Advanced Medieval Science - Yahoo! News

2013-03-06T09:55:00.001Z

Grotesque Mummy Head Reveals Advanced Medieval Science - Yahoo! News

The Halloween and Scare Attractions network

2013-02-10T12:41:00.001Z

This is how weird a society we are - there is a Halloween & Scare Attractions network - and no the Old Operating Theatre will not be joining.

The Halloween and Scare Attractions Show

Museum closes pub! - Furore over Geffrye's expansion |

2013-02-06T14:38:00.001Z

Or at least is considering demolishing it - but it is already closed.

Furore over Geffrye's expansion | Museums Association

▶ BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Anglo-Saxon Portraits, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians

2013-02-04T10:01:00.001Z

▶ BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Anglo-Saxon Portraits, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians

Boris orders fire authority to press on with Southwark Fire Station closure consultation [30 January 2013]

2013-02-04T09:55:00.001Z

If there is one fire-station that should be saved it is the one in Southwark Bridge Road - it is associated with the foundation of the London Fire Brigade and Massey Shaw and James Bradshaw - hero firemen.

Boris orders fire authority to press on with Southwark Fire Station closure consultation [30 January 2013]

Internet Archaeology: open access articles

2013-01-19T22:42:00.001Z

Internet Archaeology: open access articles- much of the archive is now free

2013-01-17T19:55:00.000Z

From Salon 291 - interesting stuff on stately homes:

'Thus our Fellow Pamela Sandbrook (in her paper on The Servants Friend? Country house servants engagement with new technology) tells the story of Virginia Woolfs inept attempts to sack her cook. Woolfs use of modern technology in order to achieve a servant-free life at Monks House in Sussex reflects her personal desire for privacy, but in a minor way it also stands for the impact of new technology, which was to make redundant an army of servants: whereas in the early days of technology it was cheaper to use servants than to install modern plumbing, by the 1920s and 1930s, technology had reversed that formula.

Pursuing the Woolf theme, another insight into the impact of technology on country houses was the way that electric light changed the appearance of houses built in the era of candle, oil and fire light as at Knole, for example, where Vita Sackville West wrote in 1922 about the restless flickering of candle flame accentuating the textures of furnishings and textiles, adding lustre to gilding or silk textiles, lending depth to plasterwork or picture frames. It was Victoria (Vitas mother) who began the introduction of electrical light at Knole in 1902, and unusually, Maureen Dillon points out in her case study on lighting technology at Knole, this included the servants rooms at a time when the prevailing opinion was that this was undesirable as it encourages reading there. Borlas Matthews, in Electricity for Everybody (1909), advised (ironically given the books title) that if the servants bedrooms were to be lit, there should be a master switch in the dressing room so that the consumer can extinguish their lights when he goes to bed himself.'

Planning change in Southwark

2012-12-28T11:53:00.000Z

North Southwark/Bermondsey has a unique collection of industrial buildings of the 18th, 19th and 20th Century. These need to be preserved as a set - and we must not allow the developers to pick them off one by one. We need to set up a thoughtful planning process whereby examples of all periods are kept.

For example in Bear Gardens there was a series of industrial buildings, most of which have been preserved except a 1960's concrete building was pulled down - probably because no one thought it had an architectural merit but it was the only one from that period and as such was a great example of modernism.

So the stock of industrial buildings needs to be studied as a set and preservation issue determined as a set with a view to preserving not just the quaint old ones but also some of the harsh modern industrial ones.

Southwark gains its uniqueness from a diversity of building types and styles and that the atmosphere of the area is ruined if they are all torn down and replaced with modern ones, so I would make sure that the historic fabric is kept in tact and that destruction of old buildings is very selective.

Lets keep Southwark as a unique environment and not turn it into a bland glass modern environment.

2012-12-20T08:37:00.001Z

Society of Antiquaries London' Salon 289 reports:

'Star Carr was far bigger than we thought
Also challenging previous interpretations is the paper in Antiquity on Star Carr by Chantal Conneller, Barry Taylor and Fellows Nicky Milner and Maisie Taylor, which ‘rewrites the character of Early Mesolithic settlement in Europe’, throwing into contention our picture of small mobile pioneering groups colonising new land and establishing small seasonal camps. In 9000 cal BC, Star Carr extended for nearly 2ha (5 acres) and involved the construction of a large timber platform, extending for an estimated 30m along the lakeside waterfront, with at least one post-built hut structure with signs of long-lasting or repeated occupation. In addition, since less than 5 per cent of the site has been excavated, and the archaeology of the larger, dryland component has hitherto been neglected, there is considerable potential for additional hut structures to be uncovered in the course of future excavations.

The scale of the site is now known to be at least eighty times larger than the small, ephemeral sites that have so far been considered ‘typical’ of the period. The authors argue that the ‘small groups’ model of Mesolithic settlement results from the small scale of our excavations, rather than reflecting the true scale of settlement in early Mesolithic Europe. They list a number of sites elsewhere in northern and western Europe known to have even higher lithic densities than Star Carr but that have only undergone limited excavation. On the basis of this new research at Star Carr they suggest that Mesolithic populations recolonising northern Europe invested significant amounts of time and labour in building structures in favoured landscape settings at which it is highly probable that large groups congregated for long periods of time — behaviour that is more typically associated with changes in socio-economic organisation several thousand years later.'

New Stonehenge dates

2012-12-20T08:23:00.001Z

SALON - the Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter Salon 289 Reports:

'The latest issue of Antiquity, for December 2012, contains a paper by our Fellows Tim Darvill, Mike Parker Pearson and Geoff Wainwright plus Peter Marshall on the sequence of construction at Stonehenge, based on recent excavation and carbon dates modelled using Bayesian algorithms. Five prehistoric stages are now proposed, in place of Atkinson’s four and Ros Cleal’s three (some of which were further subdivided), and perhaps the most radical departure from earlier interpretations is the placing of the construction of the sarsen trilithon horseshoe at an early stage in the sequence.

During Stage 1 (3000―2620 cal BC), the authors argue, Stonehenge consists of an earthwork enclosure bounded by a bank and ditch, within which are simple timber structures, pits and the fifty-six Aubrey holes, whose function remains enigmatic: the authors say they might even have been dug before the ditch, and might have held standing stones, but the jury is still out.

The relatively short phase 2 (2620―2480 cal BC) was the momentous one, when Stonehenge was ‘transformed from something fairly commonplace to a structure quite unique in the ancient world’. Two possible scenarios are presented. In the first, the trilithon horseshoe is initially surrounded by the double bluestone circle and then years, decades or centuries later, the sarsen circle is added. Alternatively, the trilithon horseshoe, the double bluestone circle and the sarsen circle are all erected in relatively rapid succession. Culturally, Stage 2 is associated with the users of Grooved Ware and took place broadly contemporaneously with the construction and use of Woodhenge, the three timber monuments south of Woodhenge and the southern and northern timber circles and the houses and settlement at Durrington Walls.

In Stage 3 (2480―2280 cal BC) the Bluestones (perhaps derived from Bluestonehenge) are arranged as the central bluestone circle within the trilithon horseshoe and the Avenue is constructed to link Stonehenge to the site of the former Bluestonehenge beside the River Avon, 2.8km away.

Next, in Stage 4 (2280―2020 cal BC), the central bluestone and the double bluestone circles are dismantled and re-built as a bluestone oval of around twenty-five monoliths inside the trilithon horseshoe and an outer bluestone circle of between forty and sixty monoliths in the space between the trilithon horseshoe and the sarsen circle.

The final stage (2020―1520 cal BC) sees extensive use of Stonehenge, with some bluestones being worked into artefacts, rock art applied (around 1650―1500 cal BC) to stones forming the sarsen circle and trilithon horseshoe, the construction of the Y and Z holes (in the period 1630―1520 cal BC) and the construction of numerous round barrow cemeteries in the surrounding landscape.

The authors stress that their sequence is provisional, and still tentative in places, and is presented as a working hypothesis for future investigations to test. In particular, the five stages cover large date spans, some of them encompassing a considerable number of events. It is unlikely, though, that building work was continuous throughout the period: it is more likely that there was a burst of activity for one or two generations, resulting in the major elements of the site, followed by long periods when little changed.

Fellow Robert Ixer, who is developing techniques for the chemical fingerprinting of the individual bluestones in order to trace their precise places of origin, said that the paper ‘was very timely and very important … a lot of us have got to go back and rethink when the stones arrived’. Fellow Tim Darvill, co-author of the paper, said that previous sequences suggested that Stonehenge started small and grew: in fact, ‘it starts big and stays big’, and the giant sandstone horseshoe came first, drawing stone from nearby quarries; only then were the smaller bluestones imported from Wales: ‘they sort out the local stuff first, and then they bring in the stones from Wales to add to the complexity of the structure’, Tim said. The new timeline ‘connects everything together, gives us a good sequence of events and it gives us a set of cultural associations with the different stages of construction’, he added.'

Roman London Walk Dec 30th

2012-12-19T23:45:00.001Z

My next walks are ideally suited to get your out of the house after Christmas

10.45 Sun Dec 30th 'Roman london' Barbican Tube

10.45 Sun Jan 6th 'The origins and Archaeology of the City of London' Tower Hill underground

Early Sirens and Mermaids

2012-12-19T12:05:00.001Z

From the Liber Monstrorum (9th-10th century)

'Sirens are sea-girls [marinae puellae] who deceive sailors with the outstanding beauty of their appearance and the sweetness of their song, and are most like human beings from the head to the navel, with the body of a maiden, but have scaly fishes' tails with which they always lurk in the sea.'

(Translation from Andy Orchard _Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters in the Beowulf-Manuscript_ (University of Toronto Press, 1995, repr 2002) pp 262-3)

From a posting in Britarch by John Clark

Norman carving of a mermaid from Norman Chapel Durham

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/durham-castle-photos/slides/eos_146pl

Archive of film about the early RAF

2012-12-01T12:09:00.001Z

Excellent archive of images.

Mopic

And Did Those Feet

Tunnel Boat Trips from London Canal Museum

William Morris Gallery wins Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year | Culture | The Guardian

Jane Austen, and getting wet

Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy Tour

Temple of Mithras - British Pathé

Jane Austen's Bath

Dynamic Map of Europe: 1000 AD to present day

BBC News - The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't

A jaunt into Jane Austen country

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter

Products through the ages - slideshow | Life and style | The Guardian

Ekarv text | Mouseion: artists' reflections on museums

Grotesque Mummy Head Reveals Advanced Medieval Science - Yahoo! News

The Halloween and Scare Attractions network

Museum closes pub! - Furore over Geffrye's expansion |

▶ BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Anglo-Saxon Portraits, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians

Boris orders fire authority to press on with Southwark Fire Station closure consultation [30 January 2013]

Internet Archaeology: open access articles

Planning change in Southwark

New Stonehenge dates

Roman London Walk Dec 30th

My next walks are ideally suited to get your out of the house after Christmas 10.45 Sun Dec 30th 'Roman london' Barbican Tube 10.45 Sun Jan 6th 'The origins and Archaeology of the City of London' Tower Hill underground

Early Sirens and Mermaids

Archive of film about the early RAF

My next walks are ideally suited to get your out of the house after Christmas

10.45 Sun Dec 30th 'Roman london' Barbican Tube

10.45 Sun Jan 6th 'The origins and Archaeology of the City of London' Tower Hill underground