The Lady in the Tower by Lynne Benton

In 1503 Walter Hungerford III was born at Heytesbury, Wiltshire, the only child of Sir Edward Hungerford of Farleigh Hungerford, Somerset, and his first wife, Jane Zouche.  They lived in his family home, Farleigh Castle in Wiltshire, which I was lucky enough to visit recently.  And it was there that I learnt the story of the Lady in the Tower.

The remains of Farleigh Castle today

Walter was nineteen when his father died in 1522, and soon afterwards became squire to Henry VIII.  He married three times, but prospered only after his third marriage in 1532 to Elizabeth, daughter of John Hussey, first Baron Hussey of Sleaford.  Walter was keen for advancement, so he asked his father-in-law to recommend him to Henry VIII’s rising minister Sir Thomas Cromwell.  This Hussey did, and subsequently let it be known that Walter would like to become Sheriff of Wiltshire, a desire which was gratified in 1533.  Walter became Cromwell’s agent in the Farleigh area, a service which bore fruit in 1536 when he was created the first (and last) Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury.  Thus far his third marriage had served him well.

The Hungerford coat of arms

However, by that time his father-in-law, John Hussey, had fallen out of favour at court, so in punishment Lord Walter began to persecute his unfortunate wife Elizabeth.  His treatment of her was remarkable for its brutality.  He locked her in a tower at Farleigh Castle

The tower probably used for her incarceration

and kept her there for four years, during which time his chaplain, William Bird, brought her food and drink.  However, she didn't trust Bird, and in around 1539 she wrote an appeal for protection to Cromwell, saying that she was “continually locked in one of my Lord’s towers in his castle … these three or four years past … under the custody of my Lord’s chaplain, which has once or twice heretofore poisoned me.”  She claimed that she was often reduced to drinking her own urine, and that without the charity of “poor women of the country” who “brought me to my great window, in the night, such meat and drink as they had”, she would have starved to death.  Apparently they rigged up a basket and pulley system through a window in the tower, and provided her with food and drink.  This may have been the window they used.

The window in the tower

It is not known whether Cromwell ordered Elizabeth’s release on receipt of her letter, but by that time Henry VIII was becoming increasingly worried about uprisings in the country protesting about his break with the Roman Catholic Church and the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  For this reason Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Chief minister, also fell out of favour. 

Sir Thomas Cromwell

Unsurprisingly it was not long before the king also caught up with Cromwell’s protégé, Lord Walter, and in 1540 he accused Walter, together with William Bird, of sympathising with the so-called “Pilgrims of Grace”, a popular uprising that had begun in Yorkshire in 1536 and was spreading.  The members were protesting not only about Henry’s split from Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but also about Thomas Cromwell’s policies and other political, social and economic grievances. 

On 28^th July 1540 both Lord Walter Hungerford and Sir Thomas Cromwell were beheaded on Tower Hill: Cromwell for treason and Lord Walter for treason, witchcraft and the then capital crime of homosexuality.  Contemporaries noted that Lord Walter had gone mad by the time of his execution, ‘for he seemed so unquiet, that many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise.’

After her husband’s death Elizabeth was finally released from the tower.  She survived, and subsequently married Sir Robert Throgmorton, with whom she had five daughters.  She died peacefully in 1554.

website: www.lynnebenton.comwww.lynnebenton.com

latest book: "Danger at Hadrian's Wall"

Julie Summers' "Our Univited Guests" by Janie Hampton

Trainee agents on the rope bridge across the muddy River Cam 
at Audley End, Essex. ©Polish Underground Movement 

Oxford writer Julie Summers has written another extraordinary book about the realities of life in Britain during the Second World War. ‘Our Uninvited Guests’ focuses on the people who had to leave their homes and start new lives in places where Hitler's Blitz could not reach them. Oxfordshire coped with over 37,000 evacuees moved from more vulnerable areas of southern England. Nobody then had heard the rumour that Hitler would never bomb Oxford, when Blenheim Palace, about 12 miles up the road from Oxford, was colonised by schoolboys.
When in September 1939, Malvern College in Worcestershire was requisitioned for civil servants, the private school was moved into Blenheim Palace. They brought with them 55 van loads of books, iron bedsteads and musical instruments, including 20 pianos. The laundry was converted into physics and biology laboratories, while the riding school became the gymnasium. The windows of all 187 rooms had to be blacked out so that no chink of light could be seen by the Luftwaffe. The boys slept in the state rooms where valuable artworks were covered with board to protect them from stray darts and ink bombs.

Items transported from Malvern College, Worcestershire to Blenheim Palace, 
Oxford shire, included twenty pianos and 400 beds. © Country Life

Pregnant women from the East End of London were evacuated to Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire to give birth to their babies. Still a splendid house, it had been the home of Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s favourite British Prime Minister. Lady Melbourne had decorated the principal rooms for her lover, the future George IV. Mothers recovering from childbirth slept in hospital beds in the lavish surroundings of the Prince Regent’s suite, stripped of its red and gold pagoda double bed, but not its beautiful Chinese wallpaper. The new born babies were bathed next to the wine cellar in the basement.

In Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, mothers recover from childbirth in the Prince 
Regent’s suite, decorated in early 19th century Chinese wallpaper. 
© Imperial War Museum 

Summers toured round England and Scotland, finding out the role of Britain's stately homes and country houses. Using extensive research and interviews, she describes in rich detail, life in some of Britain’s greatest country houses which were occupied by people who would otherwise never have seen such opulent surroundings. People from all walks of life often found the splendour and opulence at odds with their needs. The Rothschilds’ magnificent French chateau-inspired Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, housed one hundred children under the age of five evacuated from London. They ate lobster, rabbit curry, and Woolton Pie - a vegetable recipe named after the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton. Over in Warwickshire, Lord Bearsted moved his bank ‘Samuel & Co’ from London to his country home Upton House. There his 23 employees were provided with wellington boots and ate rook pie.
Coleshill House in Oxfordshire was a 17th Century mansion with no heating, no electricity and water pumped by hand. Recruits to the ‘Auxillary Units’ – a secret band of saboteurs preparing for invasion by Germans - lived in the stables. They each received a crash course in unarmed combat, petrol bombs, booby traps and explosives to attack the invading army’s supplies and transport. At night they roamed the surrounding countryside to practice this art of ungentlemanly guerrilla warfare. Over 600 underground operation bases were constructed all over England for the stay-behind saboteurs to attack from behind. Their whereabouts was top secret. Had there been in invasion in 1940, the life expectancy of saboteurs was estimated to be about 15 days.

Operation bases for saboteurs were constructed
underground and their locations kept top secret. 

‘Our Uninvited Guests’ captures the spirit of upheaval when thousands of houses were requisitioned by the government for the armed forces, secret services and government offices as well as vulnerable children, the sick and the elderly, all of whom needed to be housed safely, or secretly. In Essex, Polish special agents were trained in the grounds of Audley End House, a royal palace in the 17th century. In the old nursery and the extensive woods, they learned the skills needed to make their way back into occupied Europe and carry out sabotage and subterfuge.
I have to confess that Summers and I are friends: we go on regular walks with our dogs on the Thames towpath. We support each other in the trials and tribulations of writing social history – the excitement of new discoveries; the brain exhaustion of writing it into a readable book; and the joy of publication. Our books cover similar periods in European history, so we often share ideas and swap contacts. Once we went to interview the same person together - an elderly woman who was both a WWII evacuee (Julie’s interest) and a Brownie Guide (mine). It was fascinating to witness how we extracted quite different stories from the same person. But I’m not the only person who has enjoyed this book, which has been well reviewed. Craig Brown wrote in The Mail On Sunday, 'Julie Summers has an amazing instinct for unearthing good stories and telling quotes.' 'Summers is a good and knowledgeable writer…powerful, emotional stuff' stated The Independent newspaper, while BBC History Magazine said the books is 'A poignant, lingering account. ' 

A student midwife bathes a new born baby next to the wine cellar
at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire. © Imperial War Museum 

 Summers is a former History Girl blogger, and her most well-known book is ‘Jambusters’ a history of the Women’s Institute during the Second World War. This inspired the ITV television series ‘Home Fires’ which ran for two exciting seasons. Sadly, we were all left wondering who had died in the final scene of a plane crashing into a house. We had to content ourselves with the knowledge that the people inside were fictional, and not the real members of a rural Women’s Institute. Summers’ latest thought-provoking and evocative narrative captures a crucial period in the social history of Britain.

‘Our Uninvited Guests- the Secret lives of Britain’s country houses 1939-45',

 published by Simon & Schuster, 2018. 

                 Janie Hampton            Julie Summers

Nine Men by Ann Turnbull

"I went down to the bottom of the mountains;
The earth with its bars was about me forever..."
(Jonah, 2.6)

Madeley is a former mining town, situated on the East Shropshire coalfield and, since the late 1960s, part of the extensive new town of Telford. There are many reminders of Madeley's industrial past, one of the most poignant being the graves of nine miners, killed in a pit accident in 1864, who lie side by side in the churchyard of the parish church of St Michael. The quote above is part of the inscription on their memorial stone.

The graves are plain, bearing only the initials of each man on their cast-iron covers. The memorial stone gives their names and ages:

   Edward Wallett, 52.
   Benjamin Davies, 35.
   John Tranter, 37.
   Joseph Maiden, 18.
   William Jarratt, 18.
   John Farr, 14.
   John Jones, 14.
   Francis Cookson, 13.
   William Onions, 12.

What shocked me most when I first read this list was how young most of the dead were. Even in 1864 they were regarded as children: the coroner's inquest record states that the victims were three men and six boys. Twenty-two years earlier the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act had prohibited children under eight from working underground. But even in 1864 it would have been quite normal for children to start work at twelve - and no doubt this made an essential contribution to the family income.

The Madeley Wood Company, who owned the mine, were considered to be good employers; they had never employed women underground and were local benefactors. But the shifts were long - twelve hours - and there were no extended breaks in the working day. The men would take it in turns to grab a quick bite to eat. The air they breathed was full of dust and most of them would eventually contract lung diseases. Life expectancy was short.

Madeley's many pits are now hidden under tree-covered mounds. The Brick Kiln Leasow pit at Madeley Wood was an ironstone pit, 220 metres deep. It stood near the top of the steep hill that leads down from Madeley into Ironbridge, and nearly all the miners lived within about half a mile of it. They were a tight-knit community and no doubt many of them were related. Certainly the oldest man on the shift, Edward Wallett, was the father of William Wallett, who was banksman on the day of the accident.

On Tuesday 27th September 1864 at 5.40 pm the shift had just ended and the men were coming up in the device known as 'the doubles' - loops of chain forming seats, with a heavy iron 'bonnet' above to protect them from any falling debris. This device was hooked on to the main chain which was drawn up by the engine at a signal from the 'hooker-on'. The hooker-on that day was Benjamin Davies, an experienced man who'd been doing the job for twenty years.

When the men were about halfway up, the engine man felt the winding chain go slack. He knew at once that the miners had fallen to their deaths. Moments later the doubles, the men, the iron bonnet and the great chain crashed through the layers of thick planks at the bottom of the shaft into four metres of sump water. The thunderous sound brought miners and local people rushing to the scene.

The mutilated bodies were brought up and taken down the hill to the George and Dragon pub, close to where many of the miners lived - and desperate relatives had to be kept outside the room until the bodies had been washed and laid out.

No clear cause was ever found for the accident. The hook and chain were intact, so it was assumed that the hooker-on had somehow failed to properly connect the hook to the chain, and that the hook had slipped out halfway up. Nine men, rather than the permitted maximum of eight, were in the doubles that day. Whether this could have been a factor was unclear. A verdict of accidental death was returned.

This was not an unusual accident - a similar one occurred a few miles away eight years later, when a triple-link chain broke - but it made a deep impression on the community not only because of the large number of miners lost, but because so many were children. One of the dead, 13 year old Francis Cookson, lived in a house only yards from the one where, in the 1980s, my own 13 year old son was able to look forward to a very different future. The Victorians made great strides in child protection and improved working conditions, but one of the most shocking aspects of this story is not the employment of children - my mother started work at 14 - but the long working day, which was still accepted as normal, even for such arduous work. Change comes slowly, and is often hard won.

   This pit pony sculpture is by local artist Gerry Foxall.



We thank Ann Turnbull for this post. Carol Drinkwater will be back next month.

London Nights by Miranda Miller

   A visit to the London Museum always makes me feel much closer to the past. From some of the windows you can see London Wall, Roman walls with medieval additions. The vast excavations for Cross Rail are a great nuisance but they have uncovered unfamiliar corners of the City to be discovered as you walk to the museum, such as Salters’ Garden, the lovely sunken garden in the photo above. It’s laid out with areas of lawn, hedging, pergolas and fountains and the original Roman City wall forms its southern boundary. It belongs to the Worshipful Company of Salters - no, I didn’t know they existed, either, but they’ve been there for six hundred years.

   I was fascinated by London Nights, the exhibition of photographs that is currently at the London Museum. Most of the images are in black and white and made me think of Van Gogh, who considered night “more richly coloured than the day”.

   This exhibition is split into three sections and the first, London Illuminated, is the most impersonal, showing buildings lit up at night. Most of them are familiar but I was intrigued by the one above, showing a brilliantly lit fairy palace on a lake, with the caption White City. I only knew the White City as a rather grim area with a greyhound racing track and TV centre but it had an earlier incarnation: in 1908 forty acres of shining white buildings and waterways were built there for the Franco-British exhibition.

   This photograph shows a bird’s eye view of the site of the Exhibition, which was bigger than the Great Exhibition of 1851 although it is far less well known. With what we would now consider dubious taste, the most popular attractions were the two so-called "colonial villages" - an "Irish village" and a "Senegalese village", which were supposed to communicate the success of the British Empire (just before it started to disintegrate).

   This astonishingly confident event attracted 8 million visitors. The White City Stadium was then hastily built to be used as one of the venues for the 1908 Olympics, which were held in London after Rome dropped out at the last minute due to an eruption of Vesuvius. Another photo shows the long forgotten 1910 Congress Hall, a magnificent illuminated pagoda built for the Japan British Exhibition.

   The second section of the exhibition, Dark Matters, explores the more sinister and mysterious aspects of the night. I particularly liked a short film about a dog called Ella wandering alone on Essex Road at night. She encounters weird animals in the window of a shop called Get Stuffed, runs away from a dog catcher and meets a homeless man who offers to share his bottle with her.

Leicester Square from the series London, c.1909, Alvin Langdon Coburn
   

   This photograph of a gaslit Leicester Square is also hugely evocative. The rather sad area we know now was then the glamorous centre of London’s night life, with oyster rooms and theatres. Here is the Empire, before it became a cinema, and here also were the Alhambra, the Hippodrome and Daly’s. Edwardian sleaze was more stylish than ours and soldiers remembered the pleasures it once offered when they sang, Farewell Leicester Square.

                                          Liverpool Street Station Shelter, 1940 Bill Brandt


   This is one of Bill Brandt’s wonderful photos of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in the underground which, I think, are as memorable as Henry Moore’s shelter drawings. Brandt was born in Hamburg in 1904, moved to Paris to work with Man Ray and came to England in 1930. He brilliantly documented English social life during the Depression and then recorded the effects of the war in London. He worked for both the Ministry of Information and the National Building Record. Many of his intensely atmospheric photographs were taken at night, without flash, during the city’s blackouts.

   There are also several photographs by Bert Hardy, another outstanding photographer of the period. He was a Londoner who worked his way up from a lab assistant to become a world famous photographer. His warm and compassionate photographs were published in Picture Post, which in its heyday sold nearly two million copies a week.

   The final section of the exhibition, Switch On Switch Off, shows a complex web of associations: work and play and people who work at night, including cleaners and sex workers.

                                                  Piccadilly at Night, Bob Collin

   This photo of young men clubbing in Piccadilly in 1960 seems very remote. Their faces look both callow and sinister, as if they are just as likely to be carrying knives as their grandsons. Suits and ties for a night out have disappeared and so has Swan and Edgar.

   In this last section I enjoyed listening to the rich dark songs of Schubert’s Winterreise on headphones while watching a short film called A Winter Journey. Filmed from the top of a bus at night, it takes us through corners of London that have already become history a few years later, like the Occupy camp in Finsbury Square. This exhibition left me with an exhilarating sense of being in a city that constantly reinvents itself and survives.

My Favourite Research Books: An Occasional series by Elizabeth Chadwick

I have a few thousand research books on my shelves.  All are treasured, but if I had to take just a handful with me to a desert island, which ones would I choose?

This would be one of them.  The moment my characters become involved in a Medieval medical situation, I reach for the Trotula to give me insights. 

Basically the Trotula is an ensemble of three works on women's medicine from  12th century Italy and reflects some of the theories, practices and medicines coming out of the Arabic world at that time.  As well as dealing with ailment specific to women, the Trotula also gives advice on child care and various interesting recipes for cosmetic beautification, one of which I used in my novel The Time of Singing.

But when she combs her hair, Let her have this powder. Take some dried roses, clove, nutmeg, watercress and galangal. Let all these, powdered, be mixed with rosewater. With this water let her sprinkle her hair and comb it with a comb dipped in the same water so that her hair will smell better. And let her make furrows in her hair and sprinkle on the above-mentioned powder and it will smell marvelously.

I also mentioned this one in passing, if the woman wishes to have  long black hair, Take a green lizard and having removed its head and tail, cook it in common oil. Anoint the head With this oil. It makes the hair long and black. I am quite tempted to try out the first one but I will leave the second for more adventurous souls!

This next one too is on my 'give it a miss for now.' list. For whitening the hair, catch as many bees as possible in a new pot and set it to burn, and grind with oil, And then anoint the head. 

Should you want white teeth:  The teeth are whitened thus. Take burnt white marble and burnt date pits and white natron, a red tile, salt and pumice. From all of these make a powder in which damp wool has been wrapped Enough fine linen cloth. Rub the teeth inside and out.  I don't know what my dentist would think of that one!

As a complexion aid: for widening the face and clarifying it: take the juice of pignut , and mix steer or cow marrow with it, and let them be ground, and in these ground things add powder of aloe, cuttlefish bone, white natron, and dove dung. Let all these be ground, and let there be made an ointment. With this ointment. The woman should anoint her face.

One might be horrified until one starts to ponder the ingredients used in modern cosmetics. I just looked up the ingredients on an anti-frizz serum for hair and so chosen because it has the least ingredients to type out but I could find. I had no intention of copying the mile long list from a bottle of body lotion! The frizz-ease contains: cyclopentasiloxane, dimethiconol, ethylhexyl, methoxycinnamate, liquid paraffin (I've anglicised it) hydrolised silk and algae extract. Who knows - the chemical compounds involved in lizard extremities Could well be hidden in there. Nothing really changes that much. Today fish scales are used in the manufacture of glitter nail polish and lipstick.

Much of the Trotula is concerned with discussions of women's ailments in relation to conception and childbirth. The treatments are often very different today being based on different medical beliefs - although basic common sense is often spoken. However, it is probably not a good idea to use the following advice when considering contraception. Take a male weasel and let its testicles be removed and let it be released alive. Let the woman carry these testicles with her in her bosom and let her tie them in goose skin or in another skin and she will not conceive.

Alternatively, if one wishes to conceive, one should take take the testicles of a male pig or wild boar and dry them and let a powder be made, and let the woman drink this with wine after the percolation of the menses. Then let her cohabit with her husband and she will conceive. 

Assuming this ploy is successful and conception occurs, there are certain signs to be watched for. In order to know whether a woman is carrying a male or a female, take water from a spring and let the woman extract two or three drops of blood or milk from her right side and let these be dropped into water. And if they fall to the bottom, she is carrying a male; if they float on top, a female. 

There are comments concerning the development of the embryo. In the first month. There is purgation of the blood, in the second there is expression of the blood and the body. In the third month, the fetus produces nails and hair. In the fourth month it begins to move and for that reason women are nauseated. In the fifth month the fetus takes on the likeness of its father or its mother. In the six month the nerves are constituted.In the seventh month the fetus solidifies its bones and nerves. In the eighth month, nature moves and the infant is made complete in the blessing of all its parts. In the ninth month. It proceeds from the darkness into the light. 

However, proceeding into the light can be a tricky business and everything doesn't go to plan Remedies suggested include having the expectant mother hold a magnet in her right hand. She should try drinking ivory shavings. Likewise, the white stuff which is found in the excrement of the hawk, given in a potion is good.

The Trotula understands the seriousness of a retained afterbirth and says haste must be madeTo reject it. Therefore let the sneezing be provoked, and let this be done with the mouth and nose closed. Alternatively, the woman should be made to vomit, again this would aid in bearing down. And emetic was to be made from the cinders of an ash tree mixed with 1 dram of powder of the seed of marshmallow.

The Trotula has some interesting things to say about the care of the newborn. It says its ears should be pressed immediately over and over again, so that milk does not enter them, or its nose when the child is nursing. The umbilical cord should be tied Three fingers from the belly, because according to the retention of the umbilical cord. the male member will be greater or smaller. The baby should be kept clean and all mucus secretion is wiped away. It shall be massaged all over and then bound in swaddling. If its belly and loins become too humid and oily, they should be left free to dry out. After breastfeeding, baby should be massaged. The next passage might also come from a modern childcare manual. 

There should be different kinds of pictures, cloths of diverse colours, and pearls placed in front of the child, and one should use nursery songs and simple words, neither rough nor harsh words should be used in singing in front of the child.

Other headings in the Trotula's medical section deal with Sterility on the part of the man  a cure for Worms of the ears, what to do about pain of the intestine and itching and excoriation of the pudenda. While many of the remedies make one thank heaven to be living in the 21st-century, The Trotula is a fascinating window on the world of medieval medicine and an invaluable reference work on my research shelf.  Highly recommended.

The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine.  Edited by translated by Monica H. Green.  University of Pennsylvania Press 2001.  ISBN 978 0 8122 1806 4

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Elizabeth Chadwick is an internationally best selling author of historical fiction.  Her latest novel, Templar Silks, is the story of the Great William Marshal's pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 

Out and About: Reading history in buildings, by Leslie Wilson

It began with this building, when I was in Reading doing some shopping. It was such a truly elaborate example of hideous Victoriana that I had to record it. When I was a kid, I was taught to despise Victorian buildings and the heavy over-ornamentation of this example reminds me why. You may admire it; who knows? It's listed, and I've seen it described online as a very fine building indeed.  If you zoom in you can see that it is the W.I. Palmer memorial building, and I think, though I may be wrong, that it was originally a temperance hall set up by the originally Quaker Palmers, of Huntley and Palmer biscuit factory fame. Huntley and Palmers, long since subsumed into multi-national capital, were the producers of award-winning biscuits sold all over the world, and major employers in Reading; their factory empire sprawled between the Kennet and the railway, both of which were used to bring in supplies. Reading's prosperity originally grew from its site on the two rivers, the Kennet and the Thames, and there were many depots on the Kennet docks, which stored the grain from medieval times onwards.

Here is one of the corn stores, just opposite where I catch my bus home.

 This pub is a good deal older than it looks at first glance, and for once the side gate was open so I was able to look down and see the old courtyard. It's not a posting inn, I think (we'll come to that later), but an example of how buildings can reveal themselves if you can look round a corner. It's in St Mary's Butts, where once the citizens of Reading came for their archery practice, and the site of the eponymous Minster Church, built in the local brick-flint style. Clay and flint are an essential part of the soil round here, along with chalk. Our immediate neighbours have an old clay pit in the bottom of their garden. However, the Minster Church is partly built with stones from Reading Abbey, post-Dissolution.

Detail of the wall of St Mary's

The Minster Church

Queen Victoria Jubilee Fountain  in St Mary's Butts. 'A typical Victorian amalgam of forms and conceits' says Historic England.

 Pavlov's Dog, where my daughters used to go in their teens, is a nice piece of Victorian mock-Tudor.

 Here are some more genuinely ancient buildings in St Mary's Butts. County Delicacies, a lovely deli with a beautiful cheese counter and a wonderful range of Italian pasta among many other delights, is sadly no longer to be found in the stripy building.

 This is St Mary's old Vicarage, I think, now a pub.

 Waterstones occupies the site of the old Broad Street Independent Chapel; a temple to reading, nowadays, in Reading.

 I have always really enjoyed these Venetian-style buildings on the street that leads from Broad Street to the butter market; appropriately, the left hand one used to be occupied by Nino's Italian restaurant, but this is, alas, no longer the case. They represent to me the positive side of Victoriana.

 Here is the negative side of modernity; a building whose perpetrators actually dared to name after the architect Sir John Soane. The reason for this is that opposite the building is a monument contributed to Reading by Soane, in the Butter Market. I think Soane would have turned in his grave both at the naming of the building (which looks as if it had been badly glued together and might collapse at any moment) and its proximity to his graceful pillar. However, I'm ashamed to say that at one stage, Reading actually plopped a very smelly public toilet slap right against the monument. I am in favour of having public conveniences, but they need to be properly sited.

 Here is Soane's monument, now happily freed from the smelly anklet of public 'convenience.'

 This is one of the ancient buildings in the Butter Market, near St Laurence's church, which is one of the three ancient churches of Reading, along with St Mary's and St Giles's. The half-timbered building used to house a martial arts shop, but it has been grubby and neglected for as long as I can remember, and I've lived her for 33 years. It's a great pity, as it is a piece of Reading's heritage.

 The George, however, where Dickens stayed, I believe, is well maintained. It dates from 1506. I was going over the country looking for examples of old posting inns, then met a friend in the coffee shop at the George and realised that there was a wonderful example right under my nose. Below you can see where the coaches used to draw in, and Mine Host would come bustling out to welcome the occupants of post-chaises and private carriages.

 The Victorian Town Hall is rather fine, I think, but often looks like a suitable location for some Gothic horror narrative. This part of it was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, who also designed the Natural History Museum in London. We have a Pugin building in Reading, too, but I shall talk about that one in a later blog. There's a link to more info about the Town Hall at the bottom, which is worth clicking on. There was once an extension with an onion spire on it, which clashed a bit with the rest, but I for one am rather sad that it was demolished, as I'm rather fond of onion spires.

 According to local legend, Queen Victoria insisted her statue face the station, so that she could imagine herself leaving Reading rather than arriving there. I would take this with a pinch of salt.

 This is a rather splendid piece of eighteenth century building in the Netherlands style, which I always look at with enormous pleasure.

 This is an ancient building in London Street, where the coaches used to drive on their way to the capital. It's at the corner of Church Street, which leads to the Quaker Meeting House, where I worship. You can see the false front which fails to hide the original, older building. In Church Street you can see many buildings which are much older inside than they look from the outside, and some of them have convenient side alleys where you can look at the half-timbering.

 It's a pity that the local graffiti artists have demonstrated their lack of talent here, but you can see what I mean. This is the side of what was once the London Street bookshop, and if I remember right, Reading's first lending library (commercial, not public)

Here is one of the timbers, close up.

This is the front of the building, which nowadays houses Reading International Support Centre. You can see how the later facade has masked the half-timbered original building, but the meeting rooms and offices inside show their ancient provenance in half-timbering and rather irregular floors. There is still a bookshop inside RISC, which has a good selection of international authors, and it's well worth visiting. Below is another example of an ancient house wrapped up in a more recent (though hardly modern) facade. Also the Great Expectations, once a meeting hall, and before that, on the same site, there was the old Quaker Meeting House where William Penn once worshipped. There is a plaque commemorating this inside the RISC centre next door. Dickens gave readings in this building, hence the 'Great Expectations' of the title.

 I'll be guiding you round Reading again; the Abbey is the next stop, and I hope to go into more detail. Reading may be less glamorous than Oxford, where I once lived, but it has had huge significance in national history, and Jane Austen went to school here...
http://www.berkshirehistory.com/businesses/huntley_palmer.htmlhttp://www.berkshirehistory.com/businesses/huntley_palmer.html

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113571 

https://www.readingtownhall.co.uk/explore-reading-history/our-building-history

Remembering The Battle of Bosworth by Catherine Hokin

The first of these Welsh kings was Henry who defeated all the other kings at the Battle of Boswell and took away all their roses. After the battle the crown was found hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill. This is memorable as being the only occasion on which the crown has been found after a battle hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill.

With thanks to 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman



As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That - probably still my favourite historical book of all time which may explain a lot - History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. One of the things many people are pretty certain they can remember is the Wars of the Roses, which ended (or didn't but we'll get to that) 533 years ago today on the 22nd August 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth. History buffs or not, ask a sample of your friends about this time period and I guarantee they'll all have some sense of it. Whether it's the lost princes in the Tower, the ill-fittingly romantic name, Richard and his hunch-back, or his car-park discovery, the Wars of the Roses and its characters still resonate. They also inspire great passion. My father was a member of the Ricardian Society and a war-gamer whose sand-table battles (ask your parents) re-enacted every twist of that August day. As I said many times when my novel about Margaret of Anjou came out, he was so obsessed with the conflict that, as a child, I was fairly certain that it was still going on. And who can forget the Channel 4 documentary after the discovery of Richard III's body and Philippa Langley's face when she looked at that re-created head.

 Bosworth Memorial

Perhaps one of the reasons the Battle of Bosworth still attracts such attention (apart from the fact that a king died) is that it still courts controversy. We have no eye-witness accounts - all our knowledge of the day's events is derived from documents written after the fact and under a regime with a need to remember history in its own particular way if it was going to have any kind of a future. Some sources in fact come even later - for example there was no real attempt to analyse the use, type and position of troops  for nearly another 200 years. The site itself has long been a matter of dispute - the stone marking the spot of Richard's death is at Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. In 2010, after a major archaeological project, the actual site of the battle was announced as being 3km away from the memorial. Part of the evidence which relocated the battle site were 22 pieces of lead shot, ranging from gunshot to grapefruit-sized canonballs. Not only did this discovery change the location, it also dispelled a myth that the armies fought each other with bows and arrows rather than firepower.

 Stanley Coat of Arms

Controversies over the site are one thing but the issue of treachery - and that of Lord Stanley in particular - is quite another blood-boiler. Listen to my father and William Stanley made Attila the Hun sound like Winnie the Pooh. The version he subscribes to has the hitherto loyal Stanley turning his coat at the last minute, swooping his troops down the hill behind Richard in a shock move that ensured the king was butchered. That Stanley declared for Henry at the last minute is as certain as anything in this battle can be but the idea of the attack having no deeper roots than a self-serving decision on the day as been re-examined by historians such as David Hipshon. He cites Stanley's failure to support Richard not as a sudden change in loyalty but as coming out of a 20 year power-struggle in Lancashire; a personal score being settled in a bigger political arena. And I can already hear the cry - "tomaytoes/tomatoes: it's still treachery!"

Reconstructed head of Richard III

The site, the type of weapons used, who turned coat and who didn't: it all disappears into the mist when we get to what happened to Richard himself. Oh the ire it used to raise. The stories of his removal from the battlefield are told in a number of the chronicles which later reported the battle. According to Vergil, the body was ‘nakyd of all clothing, and layd uppon an horse bake with the armes and legges hanginge downe on both sides’, a scene the Crowland Chronicle described as a ‘miserable spectacle in good sooth’. His body was then taken back to Leicester, his head supposedly hitting the stones of Bow Bridge as it was carried across. Most accounts agree that the body was put on public display for two days at Greyfriars church. Some then have the corpse interred in a plain unmarked tomb inside the church, others talk about an alabaster tomb, with an effigy of Richard on top, being erected at a later date on the orders of Henry VII. If that ever existed it was lost, as was the King with the most commonly believed story having him tipped unceremoniously into the River Soar.

 Leicester Council Sign

Except, of course, he wasn't. In 2012, an archaeological excavation discovered a battle-damaged skeleton in a Leicester City Council car park, believed to be the site once occupied by Greyfriars Priory Church. The body showed that the skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of them to the head, inflicted in battle and suggesting the soldier had lost his helmet. A blade had hacked away part of the rear of the skull. In 2013 DNA testing identified ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ the remains as those of Richard. The University of Leicester identified the skeleton as a result of radiocarbon dating, comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of Richard’s eldest sister, Anne of York. So we had Richard but we didn't have an end to the arguing with both York and Leicester campaigning to host his remains - a battle Leicester's tourism department won.

Was 1485 the end of the Wars of the Roses? Not for Henry VII who lived under the shadow of pretenders and resurrected dead princes throughout his reign and probably never sat that comfortably on his throne. And, beyond a categorisation date of the here ends/here starts type, not for historians who still have so much of the battle left to pick over. And don't forget there's another controversy to come: the lost princes, one of history's ultimate cold cases. There's bones, they've never been tested and Philippa Langley is on the case...