The New Murrey and Blue blog

If you go to this link https://tinyurl.com/5y5j2fwy you’ll read that after a number of failed negotiations in the past, Britain is at last to be entrusted with the Bayeux Tapestry. Not for good—Heaven forfend!—but on loan, and in return we are lending France the wonderful Sutton Hoo treasures. (Can they be trusted with our treasures, one wonders? 🤔) It is a straight swap for the British Museum, the Tapestry in exchange for the Treasures. (see https://digventures.com/2021/01/16-brilliant-discoveries-from-the-sutton-hoo-ship-burial/).

Anyway, it seems the exchange is to be timed to take place while the Bayeux Museum is undergoing remodelling, at which time the tapestry will be carefully packed anyway. I have no precise dates for the Tapestry being on display here: “….But in September this year, the Tapestry is being taken off display and put into storage while building works commence. It is planned that the museum will reopen in 2027, to form part of Normandy’s millennial celebrations for the birth of its famous conquering duke, William….

There is, of course, considerable agreement now that the tapestry should more likely be called the Canterbury Tapestry, because it was most likely made there not in Bayeux: “….We do not know the circumstances by which it was created, or indeed anything much about it at all until the 15th century. The first strong documentary evidence for the Tapestry comes in 1476, when it appears to be mentioned in an inventory of Bayeux Cathedral. However, most scholars now agree that it was likely made in England, and probably more specifically in Canterbury, shortly after the events it depicts – the run-up to the Norman invasion, and the battle of Hastings itself.…”

So please give the link—https://tinyurl.com/5y5j2fwy—a good read, because it’s full of interesting information about the circumstances under which the 1066 invasion was enabled, and the wonderful Tapestry was created.

by viscountessw