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.


Friday 5 January 2024

Flood waters help to reveal a Civil War fort


The Mail Online has a report about the way recent floods have indicated the impressive earthworks of the Parliamentary fort built in 1643 at Earith in the south-eastern corner of Huntingdonshire.


Such survivals are relatively rare. The best known is probably the Queen’s Sconce at Newark, created to defend the Royalist garrison and described by Wikipedia at Sconce and Devon Park

Oxford has plans of the complex fortifications added to defend the King’s acting capital and some remains of the earthworks in the University Parks. In the case of my home town of Pontefract there are siege plans of the castle surrounded by the beseigers’ forts and linking ditches and the plan of one fort has been picked up by aerial photography.
 

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