Hyde Park Corner, London, October 1938.

540-Year-Old Page from Medieval Priests’ Handbook Discovered

A librarian in England has stumbled upon a rare page from the early days of book printing.

The 540-year-old leaf comes from a medieval priests’ handbook that had been printed by William Caxton, who introduced the printing press to England, according to a statement from the University of Reading.

“I suspected it was special as soon as I saw it,” said Erika Delbecque, a special collections librarian at the University of Reading, who found the paper hidden in an archive. “It is incredibly rare to find an unknown Caxton leaf, and astonishing that it has been under our noses for so long.”

The double-sided page has black-letter typeface and red paragraph marks that gave it away as an early western European printing, according to the university. Read more.

Bronze figure of Roman goddess unearthed at Arbeia in South Shields

Volunteers have unearthed a miniature bronze figure of a Roman goddess from Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields.

Members of the WallQuest community archaeology project and the Earthwatch Institute dug up the figure of the goddess Ceres, which is thought to be a mount from a larger piece of furniture.

Ceres was the goddess of agriculture, grain crops and fertility.

She was thought to be responsible for the fertility of the land and teaching humans how to grow, preserve, and prepare grain and corn.

Ceres was worshipped at her temple on the Aventine Hill, one of the Seven Hills of ancient Rome.

It was the second artefact of a goddess to be found by the WallQuest project at Arbeia in the last two years. Read more.

Hundreds of Roman writing tablets reveal earliest written documents in England

Black-Death Survey Reveals Incredible Devastation Wrought by Plague

The devastation wrought by the Black Death plague pandemic in medieval England has been revealed in a uniquely detailed archaeological study carried out for more than a decade with the help of thousands of village volunteers.

Although some historians have played down the impact of the bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the 1300s, new research shows that the Black Death was as deadly as described in writings that have survived from the time, with some villages suffering an almost 80 percent drop in population after the plague.

The study gathered and analyzed data about broken pieces of domestic pottery found in more than 2,000 test pits measuring 11 square feet (1 square meter) at the surface and up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) deep that were dug in 55 villages in eastern England. Read more.

Boscawen-Un Stone Circle, Cornwall, England

Boscawen-Un is a Bronze age stone circle close to St Buryan in Cornwall. It consists of a central standing stone encircled by 19 other stones, including 18 made of grey granite and one of bright quartz, which describe an ellipse with axes of 81 feet and 72 feet. The position of the quartz stone in the southwest may indicate the likely direction of the full moon during the solstice. At the northeastern edge of the stone circle are two stones in the ground, one of which has an axe petroglyph. These engravings are unusual in the United Kingdom, though they can also be observed on some of the stones at Stonehenge.

There is a wide gap in the west of the circle, which suggests the loss of stones. However this gap may represent, as with the nearby Merry Maidens, an entrance. The central stone is 9 feet long, but because of its strong inclination to the north-east, the tip is only 6.5 feet above the ground. It is thought by some researchers that the central stone embodies the phallic male principle and the quartz stone represents the female powers of the ring.

Boscawen-Un is a Cornish name, from the words bos (farmstead) and scawen (elder or elderberry tree). The suffix Un denotes an adjacent pasture. Therefore, the name translates as the pasture of the farmstead at the elderberry tree.

Artist’s impression of Langford, Essex in 700AD. I think this is a great resource for me as an author, helping to build up my visual idea of the settings that my characters inhabit.

The whole village seems so idyllic on a summer’s day, and the central activity is farming, we see crops being cultivated and livestock being herded down the path. It’s important to remind ourselves that although the history of the period is full of turmoils, daily life would carry on in the quiet farming communities throughout the countryside. We can see the smoke rising up through the roofs of the houses, by nightfall the villagers would be returning to the warmth beside the hearths.

There is no bridge over the river, illustrating that the settlement’s name came from it being situated at a long ford (a place where a river is shallow enough to cross). The continuity of names from the Anglo-Saxon period to the modern day gives us fascinating insight into each settlement’s origins. There is also no church, at this time there was certainly a large Christian presence in Essex, but even as recently as 683 a pagan king named Sighere had ruled Essex, alongside his Christian brother Sæbbi. This is the world of mixed loyalties and contending religions that I’ll be exploring in my book. Christianity would have rapidly been gaining a foothold in these communities around this time.

There is another reason why this picture is interesting, because Langford lies just outside of Maldon. We therefore know that the river that we can see in the picture is the Blackwater. If we were to follow it, we would discover the estuary and crossing to Northey island which is believed to be the site of the Anglo-Saxon defeat in 991 that is the subject of the famous poem “The Battle of Maldon”. The most significant outcome of this battle is that it ultimately led to the policy of paying Danegeld to keep the Viking raiders away.

**Unfortunately I cannot find any official website by the artist Jon Cane, which is a shame as it would be great to provide a link and to see other work.

Ira’s Shakespeare Dream    

By Glenda Armand Illustrated by Floyd Cooper

Ira’s Shakespeare Dream at Lee & Low books: https://www.leeandlow.com/books/2885

[Ira Aldridge; portrait by William Mulready c. 1840]

MedievalPoC posts about Ira Aldridge, Shakespearean Actor in Victorian London

A Dictionary of English Folklore, Jacqueline Simpson & Steve Roud

Norman castle wall found under UK prison basketball court

Archaeologists recently unearthed the walls of a Norman castle under a prison basketball court in Gloucester, England.

A team of archaeologists exposed a 12th century “castle keep wall” while excavating the site ahead of a redevelopment project, BBC reported.

In the 1780s, the castle where the prison now stands, was demolished to make room for a new prison, according to a statement from Cotswold Archaeology, the firm that ran the excavation.

While archaeologists were aware there was a castle on the property, they were not expecting something so massive, Neil Holbrook, head of the excavation, told the Gloucester Citizen. Read more.

This kind of thing has be happening a lot lately.  It happened too in the past bu since the war and violence increased in the Middle East it keeps happening.  I wish these artifacts would be be placed in a proper museum.

~Hasmonean

John Faber the Elder

On Nee Yeath Tow no Riow, King of Granajah Hore vulgo King John

London, England (1710)

Mezzotint, 200 x 150 mm.

(Portrait of John of Canajoharie, native American leader, half length in an oval, tattoos or marks on face, wearing open collarless shirt and loose gown.)

The British Museum, London

Wonderful vintage photos of the life in England in 1904

Byzantine 'flat-pack' church to be reconstructed in Oxford after spending 1,000 years on the seabed

Centuries before the Swedes started flat-packing their furniture, the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian had his own version, sending self-assembly churches to newly conquered parts of his empire.

Now one of the “Ikea-style” churches, which spent more than 1,000 years on a seabed after the ship carrying it sank, is to be reconstructed for the first time in Oxford.

The Byzantine church will be on display at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology as part of the exhibition Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, opening in June. 

Paul Roberts, co-curator of the exhibition, said: “Everything in the exhibition will be from under the sea. It’s very different from what’s been done before. Read more.

English Gold Noble, King Edward III, London mint, C. 1369-1377

The obverse with Edward standing on the deck of a ship, facing the viewer and brandishing sword and shield, decorated with coat of arms of England and France. The legend reading: EDWARD DEI GRA REX AIIGL’ 7 FRAIIC D hYB. The reverse with ornate cross with lis at ends and E in center, surrounded by crowned lions. The legend reading:  +IhC AVTEm TRAIISIEIIS P mEDIVm ILLORVm IBAT.

The obverse image of Edward within a ship is believed to have originally been designed to commemorate the famous Battle of Sulys, one of the opening clashes of the Hundred Years War and one of England’s earliest and most famous naval victories. In the brutal hand-to-hand fighting Edward was wounded by a crossbow bolt, yet he ultimately led the English in a crushing victory against the supposedly superior French fleet. Such was the scale of the victory that for years afterwards the English joked the fish were speaking French because of the number of bodies in the sea. No doubt those who handled this coin were reminded of the jest and the scale of this momentous victory.

Gilbert Charles Stuart 

Portrait of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)

England (1786)

Alnwick Castle, Collection of the Duke of Northumberland