Sentry Duty in a Roman Watchtower

The house in which I was brought up faced north across the open grassland of what survives of the medieval hunting park created by about 1180 and associated with the castle. Within this area is the race course. Just to the north-west was the Park Hill, a geological erratic, on top of which was an early twentieth century water tower built above a nineteenth century reservoir. When that was excavated in the 1870s Roman pottery was found and some apparent evidence for a ditch. This has been interpreted as the site of a Roman signal tower from the later imperial period and seems to be confirmed by an early nineteenth century map which shows a recognisable square just at that point on the hilltop. In Yorkshire, the obvious comparison is the evidence for signal stations along the Yorkshire coast most evident today at Scarborough Castle. The one close to my old home would have overlooked the Roman road linking Legiolium ( Castleford ) and points north to both Eboracum ( York ) and to Hadrians Wall, to Danum ( Doncaster )  and thence to the rest of Britannia and the rest of the Empire. Other possible watchtower sites, forming a linked chain, have been identified to the north and south of the Pontefract example.  Most of this route is still in use as A roads today, although the stretch immediately west of the tower had disappeared under the hunting park by the twelfth century, surviving in part as a boundary, but otherwise obliterated.

 

A reconstruction of a rypical Roman watchtower on the Limes in Germany. There appear to be a considerable number of such reconstructed towers in the area of the Limes.

Image: Wikipedia

It is arguable, indeed probable, that it was along this road that Constantine the Great travelled as he began his journey to the sole rule of the whole Enpirw and all that flowed therefrom. The alternative would have been from York to the Humber at Brough, then, after the ferry, to Lincoln along Ermine Street and thence to the world beyond.

I was therefore interested to find online a couple of videos about this type of watchtower or signal station on the northern frontier of the Empire is now the Netherlands and Germany. The two are filmed at reconstructed towers and explain how they operated as a system of defence and warning, and also about the life of those who are stationed in them.

They can be seen at Watchtowers: the Roman System of Border Defense and at  

What was Watchtower Duty like on the Roman Frontier? DOCUMENTARY

Diaconal Ordination at Westminster Cathedral

Today I travelled with a friend, who is the Rector of the Brothers of the Oxford Oratory, to attend the diaconal ordination at Westminster Cathedral of a young man who used to attend our meetings when he was studying in Oxford at Blackfriars.

This necessitated an early start, and delays with the traffic, taking us on a long detour from Hillingdon to Hammersmith and back to Shepherds Bush, meant we arrived in the cathedral during the Gloria.

Our friend Kevin Athaide was ordained alongside Cyril Chiaha and David Lucuy, who are from the diocese of Westminster and studying with him at Allen Hall. In the current vacancy of the see of Nottingham, which is his sponsoring diocese, Kevin's ordination was conducted along with theirs by Bishop John Arnold as an auxiliary bishop of Westminster.vi

As befitted the occasion and setting this was a dignified liturgy, and it conveyed - as it should of course - a sense of the Church as a whole doing something significant in ordaining these three men.

Afterwards we were able to congratulate Kevin, and catch up on news as well as to see Fr Richard Duffield C.O.from York. We talked with him about developments there at St Wilfrid's, all of which sounded very promising.

Afterwards the two of us from Oxford went up to visit the exhibition of Cathedral Treasures in the lower part of the tower. After some comic difficulties negotiating the turnstile, we got in to see firstly the display about the building of the cathedral, and to look at the original model for the building. One thing I discovered was that the architect, J.F.Bentley, came from my father's home town of Doncaster.

The collection of treasures is very well worth seeing, and includes relics, altarplate and vestments. Here are some pictures of the display from the cathedral website:

The mitre was worn by Cardinal Wiseman at the dedication of St George's Southwark, and is a Pugin design.
The enormous monstrance was given by a nun as a thanksgiving for her accetance into her Community.

Image: westminstercathedral.org

Also on display is the amethyst encrusted cope morse traditionally worn for their enthronements by the Archbishops of Westminster, including the present one.

The Archiepiscopal morse

Image: heraldsgospelsinengland.blogspot

In another case was Cardinal Hume's Order of Merit, and relics of  St John Southworth, and a display about the survival of the relic of his body, which is enshrined in the cathedral.

The cathedral website has details about the exhibition which may be read here.

Before we left the cathedral precints we had a good look around the St Pauls Bookshop and that of the Catholic Truth Society in the piazza outside. 

An enjoyable day, and a significant one for the three deacons, whom I invite readers to join me in keeping them in our prayers.

Our Lady of Doncaster

Today being the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel seems an appropriate day to post something about a medieval English Carmelite sponsored devotion to Our Lady - that of Our Lady of Doncaster. This developed from the mid-fourteenth century in the Carmelite friary in Doncaster, and remained important until its closure in the 1530s. In the last half century and more it has been revived in the church of St Peter-in-Chains in the town centre, and was encouraged by the future Cardinal Heenan when he was diocesan Bishop in the 1950s. There is a good account of the history and revival of the shrine here.

The modern statue of Our Lady of Doncaster in the church of St Peter in Chains

Image: Wikipedia

This shrine attracted my interest not only as being a revival of a medieval devotion in my home area, but in the town in which my father was born and raised and in the church whose predecessor was attended by my Catholic cousins. As a consequence Our Lady of Doncaster is a title under which I often invoke the assistance of the Virgin Mary.

Doncaster in Scotland?

Thanks to Yahoo News and the Doncaster Free Press here is a curious bit of history that is something of a non-story in my view, but still quite entertaining in its own way. Doncaster, my father's home town, and very much a Yorkshire town, may be, it seems, actually in Scotland...

Purged of contemporary local journalese the story is as follows:

Doncaster local historians Peter Robinson and Charles Kelham have unearthed evidence that Doncaster was under Scottish rule for 21 years from 1136 to 1157. But while the town was officially signed over between the kings of England and Scotland, it seems it was never formally handed back.

Tourism manager Colin Joy said: “I love it - it is so quirky and has amused and intrigued everyone I have mentioned it to. What really intrigued me was that a formal handing back seems to be lacking.”

The pair found that during the reign of King Stephen of England, King David I of Scotland, of whom there is an online biography here, conquered parts of northern England.

A peace treaty - The Treaty of Durham - was concluded in 1136 and, as well as the county of Northumberland, Doncaster - but nowhere else in Yorkshire - was handed over to Scotland.

A second treaty three years later confirmed Scottish ownership, but in 1157, King Henry II of England simply took back the areas lost to the Scots - but without any official paperwork to seal the deal.

King David I (1124-1153) and King Malcolm IV (1153-1165)

Image: Wikipedia

Peter Robinson, the Doncaster Museum officer, said : “We have King David coins dating from that time found in Doncaster so the links are certainly there. But it is unlikely Doncaster would have been noticably affected under Scottish rule.”

‎Silver penny of King David I

Image: Wikipedia

To this I would add that I suspect Doncaster was given over as a staging post for King David on his journeys into England - his son held the Earldom of Huntingdon - and King David was the local lord rather than exercising sovereignty. Of course had his grandson not lost whatever possession he had in 1157 Doncaster might have been a potential source of continuing conflict, but it is difficult to see it surviving as a separate entity for long given the inherent power of the English monarchy.

For the young King Henry II it was no doubt a matter of taking back waht had been ceded by his less capable predecessor in the stress of civil war. The fact that the new King waited until King David I was dead may reflect gratitude for the Scottish king's support of Henry's mother, his neice, and who indeed had knighted Henry as a teeneager, in the conflict with King Stephen. Equally it may mean that this was just the first opportunity to get the border back to where it had been under King Henry I in 1135.

Of course Doncaster might have ended up with a history like Berwick on Tweed, which of course is on the border between the two realms, and which is sometimes claimed, due to its anomalous status still to be at war with Russa from the Crimean War...