Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday 19 September 2021

An Iron Age shrine on the Yorkshire Wolds


I wrote recently that I rarely comment on prehistory as it is a subject about which I know very little and, being prehistory, it is much more the preserve of the archaeologist than the historian. 

However I was presented by the Internet with an article from the Yorkshire Post about an excavation of what appears to have been a shrine from the Iron Age on the Yorkshire Wolds. Not only is this an insight into what was happening in the era before the Romans conquered southern Britain but it is from my home county, if not from my home area.

The site appears to show a sequence of occupation and changes of use over perhaps several centuries and suggests that it was the base for a chieftain. Even in the Roman period it may have still been recognisable as a place of some significance.



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