Colchester’s Dutch Quarter

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…

The truth about the Christian New Year’s Eve….

New Year’s Eve now and New Year’s Eve in the mediaeval period actually refer to two different calendar days. Old New Year’s Eve was 24th March. For an easy-to-understand explanation, please go to here, but whichever the day, it was still New Year’s Eve. We now celebrate it with much fun, laughter and hope, but…

I’m Julian, this is my friend Mary?

(with apologies to any surviving “Round the Horne” fans) On the right is Mary I, the penultimate “Tudor” monarch. Her brief reign was a reaction to the Reformations of her father and brother, reintroducing the Catholicism that prevailed until twenty years earlier but she died without issue and her religious policy was reversed by her…

Another clue to the mystery of the “Princes”?

On the left is Gipping Chapel in Suffolk, attached to the Tyrrell property of Gipping Hall. It is a tradition within the Tyrrell family that the “Princes”, the sons of Edward IV who were technically children, lived there during 1483-4 “with the permission of the mother” . To the right is St. Nicholas of Myra,…