RICHARD WHITTINGTON c.1350-1423. MERCER, MAYOR AND A MOST BENEVOLENT CITIZEN OF LONDON

Reblogged from A Medieval Potpourri @sparkypus.com A delightful artist’s impression of ‘Richard Whittington dispensing his charities’.  Artist Henrietta Ray before 1905 oil on canvas.  Royal exchange. Even the most disinterested in history children would recognise the name Dick/Richard Whittington and also his best, and only friend,  his cat,  most of them being familiar with the rather delightful folk…

Sassanachs don’t Like Mondays (allegedly)

Ormond versus Desmond In addition to the canonical list of battles, the sporadic chaos of the Wars of the Roses spawned one or two encounters between the heads of rival aristocratic families, of which the best known is the battle between the Berkeleys and Talbots at Nibley Green in Gloucestershire in March 1470. What is…

A hoard found in Gloucestershire….but it wasn’t quite what it might have been….!

The picture above was taken by my daughter, when she glanced down in a Gloucestershire field and saw something shining. She investigated, and found it was a piece of costume jewellery, half hidden in mud. So she retrieved it…and then something else and then something else. Taking it all home, she washed the mud away…

That’ll be 1,000 eels in yearly rent, sir….

If there’s one thing that I loathe, it’s wriggling, wormy, serpentine creatures. Worst of all, I’m ashamed to say, is the humble garden worm. Ugh! I don’t harm them, I simply avoid them. Eels are on my list as well, especially when they used to writhe and slither up the little streams and ditches (as…

Some ghosts of Oxfordshire, but try Gloucestershire for size too….

  It seems that Oxfordshire is one of our most haunted county. Maybe. But I know of a few that would claim more ghosts. At the risk of irritating a whole bunch of folk, I’ll say my next-door county of Gloucestershire has the most ghosts of all. OK, OK, don’t all shout and wave your…

Was it a spring tide in 1607? Was it a storm? No, it was a tsunami! Or was it….?

  “….But the yeere 1606, the fourth of King James, the ryver of Severn rose upon a sodeyn Tuesday mornyng the 20 of January beyng the full pryme day and hyghest tyde after the change of the moone by reason of a myghty strong western wynde….” John Paul, Vicar of Almondsbury In ‘A True Report of…

Goodrich, a castle in the Welsh Marches….

It seems to me that Goodrich is often overlooked when it comes to British castles, yet it is one of the most beautiful and is situated in a matchless position above the River Wye. My daughter lives not far away, here in Gloucester, and on 29th April 2019 she went to Goodrich to take some…

The King’s Champion and his circus horse….!

We have all heard of the dashing King’s/Queen’s Champion riding fully armed into the coronation banquet, throwing down challenges to anyone who would dare to find fault with the monarch’s right to the throne. I did not know that there is a strong possibility that the Dymoke family, hereditary holders of the title, may have…

The contrasting fates of two properties associated with Sir Francis Drake….

  The recent concern https://www.metro.news/sir-francis-drakes-birthplace-at-risk-of-being-lost-forever/1243118/ gradual disintegration of Sir Francis Drake’s birthplace, the Grade II listed Crowndale Farm, in Tavistock, Devon, where he came into the world in 1540. It is unbelievable that such neglect has been allowed to take place. What is the point of listing a property, and then not providing the owner…

Oh, the bells, the bells….!

Natural disasters were not to only thing to bring chaos to the great Benedictine abbey at beautiful Winchcombe in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. Not just the 1091 lightning strike on the tower of the Abbey church of St Mary, which opened up “a huge crack in the walls, large enough for a man to pass through…