Buckden Bishop’s Palace

A few years back I wrote about Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire, the old palace of the Bishops of Lincoln. Finally, with the pandemic receding, I was able to visit the site in its small village (once a thriving place in coaching times and earlier but much diminished with the advent of the railways.) Here Richard…

Beautiful Collyweston….

The ten best villages in England are listed here and Collyweston in Northamptonshire makes the grade. I can only say that it does so entirely on its own merit and in spite of having once been the lair of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

A holy Anglo-Saxon family

The best known Wuffing king of East Anglia was Raedwald, who is almost certainly buried at Sutton Hoo, in a transitional style that befits a convert to Christianity. Anna (male despite the name) was his nephew and eventual successor and no fewer than four of his daughters, together with his son, were canonised. Among Raedwald’s…

Boris and the haunted village: no not THAT Boris, I mean Boris Karloff….!

In my internet exertions trying to trace the origin of and more details about a certain Joan Bramshott, daughter of Sir Roger Bramshott and widow of Sir John Shardelowe of Fulbourn in Cambridge, I learned her family originated from Bramshott in Hampshire. This site popped up. The most haunted village? Well, I won’t argue, becuse…

The outstanding exception in the “Cambridgeshire” six….!

Well, it’s true, I don’t know many of the six Cambridgeshire castles that are listed in this article . Many of them disappeared very early on in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and hill forts aren’t something about which I know a great deal anyway. Poor old Cambridge Castle suffered the ignominy of having a Shire…

Buckden Towers-Heritage at Risk

Caring for heritage buildings is a never-ending job. They may have stood for hundreds of years but just like every other building, they crumble and decay with time and need urgent restoration. A recently addition to the ever-growing ‘Heritage at Risk’ ledger is Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire. Formerly known as Buckden Palace, it was home…

Wonderful wall paintings under the whitewash. . .

Caption for the above illustration: The north wall, displaying a Nativity framed by the Seven Ages of Man. At lower left is a cradled infant, helpfully labelled ‘INFANS’; next, we have Boyhood (see him spinning a top with his whip), then, mostly lost, Adolescence, followed by Youth (with a hawk on his wrist). Manhood follows…

DR JOHN ARGENTINE – PHYSICIAN TO PRINCES

UPDATED POST ON sparkypus.com A Medieval Potpourri https://sparkypus.com/2020/06/15/dr-argentine-physician-to-the-princes-in-the-tower/ King’s College Chapel.  Dr Argentine is buried in a chantry chapel on the south side close to the alter. In Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, just south of the alter can be found the chantry chapel where Dr John Argentine, Provost of Kings College from 1501 until his death…