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.


Tuesday, 30 August 2022

Know your swans


The sale of two manuscripts detailing swan markings for East Anglia dating respectively to the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries is reported upon by the Eastern Daily Press in Rare Tudor Norfolk and Suffolk swan-marking guide sold for £70,000

The precision and variety of the markings is in itself fascinating as well as the continuity of the tradition in and around the Fens.

It is rather to be regretted that the volumes will be leaving this country having been bought, according to the article, by a Canadian institution. A case for the application of an export ban pending fund raising here?

I posted about the tradition of checking of the marks on the birds at Swan Upping last year in my post Swan Upping



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