Conserving pillboxes from WWI

Yesterday, on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph had an interesting and informative article about work in Norfolk to preserve surviving pillboxes near North Walsham in Norfolk which were erected to resist a possible, indeed anticipated, German invasion during the Great War. 

As the article explains such an invasion plan did not exist, but the fear of it, fuelled by the popular war-scare fiction of the early 1900s, was for a time genuine, and considerable. Some of the contemporary quotations cited in the article are revealing.

Conserving these miniature blockhouses is certainly a worthwhile project and a way of appreciating how local communities and individuals reacted to the War and its potential impact on rural Norfolk.

The article can be read at How fear of a German invasion swept Britain in the First World War

As a personal addendum my mother and her sister-in-law both recalled going out with their family and neighbours at night to watch the Zeppelin which passed over Pontefract in, I think, 1917, and dropped its bombs harmlessly in the Park - where the racecourse is - and my mother also recalled going the next day with her brother, who was four ears older, to view the craters. Why they went out to watch the potential air-raid was not clear, as there was shelter provision used on other occasions nearby.

A Portuguese ship from 1533 Discovered in Namibia

The Indian Defence Review reports in an online article about the discovery in Namibia of the Portuguese carrack the Bom Jesus, and much of its cargo, which was lost in 1533 whilst on route to India.

What makes this discovery unusual for maritime archaeological work is that the vessel is now inland, having been carried there as sand dunes have moved inland over the intervening centuries.

The arid conditions have helped preserve materials which would have disintegrated in wet conditions, and its isolation has also contributed to its cargo of precious materials surviving. 

The article says that the plan is to create a museum in the nearest to house the remains of the vessel and its contents. This would doubtless encourage tourism and bring in investment and revenue.

The article can be viewed at 500-Year-Old Treasure Ship Found in Namib Desert With Gold, Ivory and Priceless Global Artifacts

An Iron Age gold coin from Germany

His garden maintenance has an online account of the discovery of a gold quarter-stater from near Leipzig that is dated to the fourth century BC.

The article sets out to firmly place the discovery in its historical and cultural context. The coin may be more in the way of a tribute offering rather than something used in monetary exchanges. 

The writer also suggests, from the wonderfully long German name of such tiny cup shaped gold coins - or maybe tokens would be an equally good term - an interesting explanation of the folklore notion that one could find a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow.

 

The article can be seen at Exceptional discovery: in Germany, a 2,200-year-old gold coin reveals a forgotten myth and unseen exchanges

The living and the dead of Medieval Edinburgh

  

I chanced upon a BBC News article which led me to other online sites which report on discoveries made in studying more than a hundred skeletons found in 1981 in excavations within St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh

Edinburgh 900 was been a celebration marking the novocentenary of the charter in 1124 from King David I founding the burgh and his establishment of St Giles as its mother church.

The official video about the project and the facial reconstruction of five of the individuals can be seen at 

🔎 Edinburghs first burghers

 

The BBC News article which first alerted me to the whole project, and which concentrates on a male teenager who died from the plague in the mid-fourteenth century, can be seen at First scientific evidence of Black Death in Edinburgh found on skeleton

The scientific skills involved in such work continue to advance and are very impressive indeed.

Writing this it strikes me that this is a very suitable subject for All Souls and November Dead Lists as we recall those who were here before us, and that their residual mortal remains can still reveal that they were once flesh and blood, as well as bones, like us.

Identifying the site of the battle of the Granicus

Researchers in Anatolia believe they can pinpoint the actual site of the battle of the Granicus, fought in 334BC, and the first of Alexander the Great’s victories over the Persian Empire.

The Grabicus is a river which flows north-west into the Sea of Marmora. Whilst the general location of the battle is well known, these latest investigations by analysing the descriptions of the battle and the terrain, as well as archaeological evidence of burials have led to a much more precise identification.

Their conclusions are set out in an article on Biography.com, and which can be viewed at A Stunning New Discovery May Rewrite the Legend of Alexander the Great

Wikipedia has a very detailed account of the battle and a discussion of the sources at Battle of the Granicus

and there is additional information about the geography of the site at Biga Çayı

A hoard of gold coins from the Dissolution era

The ZME Science and BBC News websites have reports about a significant hoard of gold coins found during lockdown in a garden at Milford on Sea in Hampshire. The total of 70 gold coins date from the early years of King Henry VI in the 1420s, include others issued under King Edward IV and King Henry VII, but the majority are from the reign of King Henry VIII, ending in 1535-7. Their face value is £26.5.5 and a halfpenny. Designated the New Forest Hoard, in the basis of the last date for minting they appear to have been buried about the time of the dissolution of the monasteries - and that is suggested by the ZME article as the reason for their concealment. I am not sure that monasteries such as Christchurch Priory - or for that  matter the nearby Beaulieu Abbey - would have necessarily held such quantities of cash, and I would be inclined to see this as family rather than institutional wealth. 

It occurs to me than another possible reason for burying a sizeable sum in gold might have been the threat of a French raid in the area in 1544-45, best remembered today for the loss of the Mary Rose. 

In addition by that time the government was debasing the silver currency and these gold coins may have been buried as a safeguard against the consequent inflation.

The coins have now been sold in smaller lots at auction.  Personally I think it is to be regretted that the hoard could not be kept together, although I assume it has all been catalogued and that can be cited by researchers.

The ZME article can be seen at A Couple Doing Gardening in England Found a Massive Trove of Henry VIII Gold Coins Likely Hid By a Church

The BBC News reports can be seen at Hampshire couple find Tudor coins worth £230k while gardening and at New Forest hoard of 70 coins dug up in lockdown fetch over £380k

A possible relic of the Gunpowder Plot

Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and its failed attempt to blow up the King, Lords and Commons at the State Opening.

 

The BBC News website had a tropical story with a report about a gold ring found by a metal detector close to the Warwickshire birthplace of the leader of the Plot, Robert Catesby. The house was later occupied by another of the conspirators, John Wright. Wright and his brother Christopher had been at school with Guy Fawkes in York, and were killed in November 8th alongside Catesby at Holbeche House in Staffordshire in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Fawkes and the gunpowder at Westminster. 

On the inside of the ring is an inscription about being a friend in deed that could well be linked to the Plot, if “deed” is taken to mean the act of blowing up Parliament.

The ring is due to be auctioned next month. One would hope it goes to a public collection where it can be displayed.

The online article can be viewed at Gunpowder Plot 'leader's ring' found in Lapworth to go to auction

Wikipedia has biographies of Catesby and the Wright brothers at Robert Catesby and at John and Christopher Wright

Unearthing Hadrian’s Wall west of Carlisle

Archaeologists in Cumberland have opened up at Drumburgh the foundations of part of the continuation of Hadrian’s Wall west of Carlisle along the southern shore of the Solway Firth. 

Recent excavations in Carlisle have revealed significant evidence about life in the Roman city - arguably the last such community at this extremity of the Empire, and the equivalent of an outlier in the Nile Valley or the upper Euphrates. 

Revealing something of this westernmost section of the Wall is interesting as I think, from my visits there in past years, that although the line of the wall has been ascertained there is nothing visible above ground of the Roman structure until Carlisle itself is reached. 

The archaeological work is reported upon in an article from the BBC News website and it can be seen at Hadrian's Wall section discovered in Drumburgh dig

There is more about the location of the Wall at this point and about the post-Roman history of its remains from Wikipedia at Drumburgh