anniversaries
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THE MEDIEVAL FREE COMPANY AT BUCKLAND ABBEY AUGUST 2015 On a Bank Holiday Monday, 31st August 2015, I visited Buckland Abbey near Plymouth where a Wars of the Roses re-enactment group who call themselves The Medieval Free Company had set up their encampment. Buckland Abbey is a National Trust property which was founded by Cistercian…
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There are some interesting reconstructions here..apart from the blond Richard, which (try as I will) I just cannot accept. If he’d been blond (especially THAT blond!) it would surely have shown on his portraits. Or comment would have been made. His hair was medium-brown to dark, maybe a shade of chestnut…just NOT blond! It seems…
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Five years ago, we wrote about the lost Newarke Church in the Hospital of the Annunciation, where Richard lay for two days between his death and burial in the Greyfriars. As we said, the site is now occupied by the Hawthorn Building of de Montfort University, although these two original arches have been integrated. Here…
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“….the phrase ‘king by fact, not by law’….rang out again, though in a different choice of words, when Henry VII described Richard III’s reign. Richard III was never rightfully king from the moment he died, as he was succeeded by Henry VII, a man who felt his reign was completely illegitimate. Although Richard III would have…
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Like other towns near the east coast, Colchester was partially settled by Hugenot refugees from the Low Countries in the sixteenth century. The Dutch Quarter is defined as being to the immediate north of the middle of High Street, as West Stockwell Street turns off at the Town Hall. This Victorian structure has six historic…
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Nottingham’s medieval magic has disappeared from its castle….
1831 fire, Battle of Bosworth, Charles I, david II, Dukes of Newcastle, Edward III, English Civil War, Isabelle de France, John, John Hutchinson, Luddite riots, Neville’s Cross, Nottingham, Nottingham Castle, Parliamentary army, Richard I, Richard III, Robin Hood, Roger Mortimer, siege of Nottingham, slighting, William II’m sorry, but even before the above fire in 1831, Nottingham Castle didn’t look anything like a proper castle. Gone are the medieval towers and battlements, and all that’s left is a mansion on a hill. Nothing smacks of the lost age of Plantagenet kings, knights and armour. Great events happened here in earlier centuries,…
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Whitefriars is in Farringdon Without ward, London, where in medieval times stood a religious house belonging to the Carmelite friars. I came upon it (on-line, not in person) because while researching a certain Sir William de Windsor, a very unpopular and harsh Lieutenant of Ireland in the later reign of King Edward III. He was…
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As the author of this Guardian review points out, when we think of Chaucer, we visualise a rather chubby, light-hearted, witty, somewhat cheeky middle-aged man as portrayed in the few portaits we have of him, such as the one above. Well, it would seem that as a younger man he was indeed cheeky! And…
