Windleshaw Chantry

Windleshaw Chantry dates from about 1415 and is the oldest structure extant in St. Helens. (Now Merseyside, formerly Lancashire.) It is an unusual example of a detached chantry, not part of some other religious building. Locally, it is sometimes known as Windleshaw Abbey, though in fact it was never an abbey or even a priory.…

Walking “Tudor” England

Suzannah Lipscomb has just completed another series on Channel Five, this time visiting the sites related to the “Tudors”. In the first episode, she concentrated on Henry VIII and the naval power he inherited from John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. The second was principally about the penultimate “Tudor”, Mary I, as well as Edward VI…

TREASON 3 – The Long Parliament 1649

Introduction “ The scaffold was hung round with black, and the floor covered with black, and the axe and block (were) laid in the middle of the scaffold. There were divers companies of Foot and Horse on every side of the scaffold, and the multitude of people that came to be spectators were very great.”[1]…