There is a new dictionary of the medieval Irish language, contained in 23 volumes, see here. That’s a LOT of words! But one affects me more than all the others. It seems that “leprechaun” is not native Irish. It’s Roman. Oh, no. I wish they hadn’t discovered this, because as far as I’m concerned, leprechauns are Irish through and through!
To read more, go here.
Well, when we think of the Romans, we now know they came from every corner of Europe and even the Middle East, but do we always think of Crusaders as being so diverse? This is an interesting article, and worth reading.
Except….Richard III led the Third Crusade? One lives and learns. I’ll warrant Richard would have been as surprised as me to learn of this particular exploit!
Who let Dan Jones out? At least, as in his last outing, he is accompanied both by a historian (Suzannah Lipscomb) and an engineer (Rob Bell), narrating and illustrating almost two millennia of the city’s past.
In the first episode, we were taken through the walled city of “Londinium” being built and rebuilt after Boudicca’s revolt. Whilst Bell showed us the Kent stone from which the original Tower was built, we were told about the Ampitheatre and the remains, near Spitalfields, that include the “Lamb Street Teenager” and the slaves that helped to build the city, strategically located on the Thames. Some archaeology has resulted from the building of Crossrail.
As Roman Britain ended and the Anglo-Saxons arrived, their original city (“Londonwych”) was on a smaller scale. Viking raids followed and Alfred moved the city inside the Roman walls as “Londonburgh”, as broken glass and pottery found near Covent Garden testifies, with the previous entity further east now being known as Aldwych. Although the Vikings took the city, Ethelred II reconquered it and destroyed London Bridge as well.
The programme finished with William I’s coronation on Christmas Day 1066, followed by his rebuilding of the Tower with Norman stone, not to be confused with this historian, with the domes later added by Henry VIII.
The second episode showed us Westminster Abbey, later to be rebuilt at great expense by Henry III, in a smaller city then separate from London, where every coronation since Harold II has taken place, followed by Westminster Hall, where Wallace, Fawkes and Charles I were all sentenced to death. Half of the evolving city’s population fell victim to the Black Death, after which Richard Whittington, younger son of a Gloucestershire knight, really did serve as Mayor three or four times under Richard II and Henry IV. The population then increased exponentially to the days of the wealthy Cardinal Wolsey, who built Whitehall Palace before falling from Henry VIII’s favour, so Henry and his successors occupied it from 1530 until the fire of 1698. This part ended with Elizabeth I knighting Drake aboard the Golden Hind.
Week three covered the Great Fire, which the trio had previously examined in much greater detail, although they did mention Pepys’ description, the probable origin in a Monument Lane bakery, the timber-framed buildings of the old city and the easterly wind that spread the fire. Although we can see the new St. Paul’s today, Wren’s original plan for the area was even more radical, featuring a Glasgow-style grid of streets. London then expanded to the west for merchants and their imports via the Thames, whilst the poor stayed in the east where gin was popular. In the nineteenth century, industrialisation caused the city’s population to rise rapidly, although smog became a factor.
London Bridge became the city’s first rail terminus, in 1836, before Euston was built and Paddington was soon added to serve Brunel’s Great Western lines. The steep hills of Hampstead were overcome through a man-made valley, as Bell showed by visiting the abandoned Highgate station, allowing London to expand to the north. Poor water hygiene caused a cholera outbreak, which Bazalgette’s civil engineering solved with pumping stations, sewers and the reclaiming of land. Heavy traffic then necessitated the strengthening of the ancient bridges. The reclaimed land (Embankment) and Great Fire site (Monument) are both remembered on the Underground map.
The series concluded by pointing out that road congestion was quite possibly worse in 1860 than it is now, as trains were banned from running within two miles of the epicentre at street level. The solution was to run them underground, with the Metropolitan line being started first by “cut and cover” and the Northern line, authentically bored, to follow. Residents moved out of the first engineered areas to the east, leaving Shoreditch and Whitechapel overcrowded with twice the mortality level of London as a whole. By 1890, the capital had five million residents and Charles Booth’s “poverty map” highlighted a quarter of these, with the worst cases in the East End, where “Jack the Ripper” preyed on some of them. From the maps, living conditions were addressed and the worst slums demolished. Following Edward VII’s accession in January 1901, recognisable modern buildings such as Admiralty Arch, the MI5 building and the War Office arose. Visitors could stay in hotels such as the Savoy and shop at Selfridges as we can do today. Suffragettes were active before the First World War, during which they suspended their activities and many worked in armaments manufacture, for instance at the Royal Ordnance factory known as the Woolwich Arsenal.
Air warfare came to London with Zeppelin bombs in 1915. In the remainder of the conflict, there were thirty raids killing forty thousand people, including thirty children at Poplar in 1917. Armistice Day was followed by the “Spanish ‘flu”, which was generally three times as deadly as the war itself, with some 20,000 deaths in London alone. In the following years, houses were built along the expanded Metropolitan Lane, taking in towns such as Pinner and Harrow, and advertised in a “Metroland” magazine to raise the population to 8.6 million. The Blitz brought the Second World War to London a year after the start but, importantly, after the corrugated tin structures known as Anderson shelters were made available. It happened on fifty-seven consecutive nights in the first instance and a total of two million homes were damaged or destroyed. Replacing these and housing Commonwealth immigration from 1948 was hampered by the Green Belt so that London could no longer expand outwards, only upwards. As freight expanded, containers could no longer fit into the Thames so the docks were less busy from the sixties, in favour of more coastal ports. However, Docklands regeneration was initiated in the eighties as the City was pushed eastwards to Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs. In a further effort to relieve congestion, the great Crossrail project opens later this year with twenty six miles of new tunnels, forty-two metres below ground, providing a unique archaeological opportunity to view London’s past.
In conclusion, it is possible to enjoy a history programme with Dan Jones, so long as he has at least two colleagues and cannot simply indulge his prejudices against particular figures. The second half of the series was more a social and economic history, which is a further restraint.
This new York Dungeon series of the Yorkshire Rogues & Legends series may start this month with Cartimandua, but Richard is in the offing, and as he’s described as “much-maligned” it doesn’t seem to be in the Tudor camp!
“…The next in line in the Yorkshire Rogues & Legends series will feature Knaresborough psychic Mother Shipton from May, followed by the much maligned last Plantagenet king, Richard III…”
Cartimandua, of course, is either a vile and murderous collaborator or a clever patriot who played the Romans at their own game. Which description you subscribe to is entirely a matter of personal choice. But then, we choose to believe in Richard III as a betrayed and wrongly besmirched king. I have no doubt at all that he was the rightful King of England, and was killed by treachery. A good, courageous, just man whose enemies didn’t want such a man on the throne. They fancied—and got!—corruption!
So, is Cartimandua, the so-called killer queen, actually a wronged queen? Or did she earn her bloodthirsty reputation?
In May this series about Yorkshire’s “rogues and villains” will turn its attention to the Knaresborough psychic, Mother Shipton, and from July we will have Richard III. Then in October will come the Pearl of York, Saint Margaret Clitheroe, a 16th century martyr of the Roman Catholic Church, of whom I confess I have never heard.
“…The York Dungeon, in Clifford Street, brings to life 2,000 years of York’s “horrible history” in a 75-minute journey that combines theatrical actors, special effects, stages, scenes, black comedy and storytelling for a “walkthrough experience that you see, hear, touch, smell and feel”. For more information on the shows, visit thedungeons.com/york. …”
No doubt archaeologists thought all their Christmases had arrived at once when first they heard the breaking news of the building of Crossrail, Europe’s largest infrastructure – which will be called the Elizabeth line and will open in phases from late 2018 – and the exceptional opportunities the excavations would bring. However, did they ever imagine in their wildest dreams the wealth of artifacts that would be unearthed ranging from bison bones, 68000 years old, found at Royal Oak near Paddington, through the medieval period to Roman finds including a burial site beneath the area that once covered Liverpool Street Station. Since the work begun in 2009 archaeologists have unearthed ‘tens of thousands of items’ from 40 sites spanning 55 millions years of London’s history and prehistory (1).The new railway will run from east to west through some of London’s most historical areas. It has been described as a ‘layer cake of history hidden below the city’s streets’.
CROSSRAIL ‘LAYER CAKE’ OF OLD LONDON
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
Some of the most interesting finds were discovered beneath Liverpool Street Station which stands right in the heart of what was once medieval London. Of particular interest was the south-east corner where the ticket office once stood for this had been built over the Bedlam burial grounds (later known as Bethlehem Hospital) which had been in use since 1247 to 1815. Eighty archaeologists worked on the site retrieving thousands of objects. A total of 4,000 burials was uncovered including a plague pit containing 30 victims from the Great Plague of 1665. 
One of the most poignant finds, a necklace that was found on the skeleton of a baby (modern re-stringing). The beads are amber, white amber, cornelian, glass and bone.
Plague victim from the mass pit aged 17-25 probably male.
Grave Marker for Mary Godfree, a victim of the Great Plague who died 2 September 1665.
CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE AND FARRINGDON
A large ditch was excavated to the south of Charterhouse Square. It may be the remains of Faggeswell Brook which flowed into the Fleet River, the ditch formed the southern boundary of the cemetery and Charterhouse Monastery, founded in 1371 and suppressed in 1538. Included in the items found, which had been dumped in the ditch to fill it in between 1580 and 1640 were leather shoes, parts of a horse harness dating back to the late 1500s , pottery and floor tiles dated to 1300 probably from the monastery. The remains of a cemetery were discovered containing the remains of victims of the Black Death dating from 1348/9. Twenty-five skeletons were discovered buried in three layers.
TWO MEN IN THEIR 40S BURIED HOLDING HANDS FROM ONE OF THE LAYERS OF THE CHARTERHOUSE BURIAL PLOT
WORCESTER HOUSE, STEPNEY GREEN
Reconstruction of moated Worcester House, built around 1450
Worcester House, a 15th century moated manor house built about 1450 probably on the site of an earlier house was previously known as King John’s Palace. Rubbish thrown into the moat gives an insight into the lives of those who lived there. Among the many artifacts found were leather shoes, the remains of a horse harness dating from the late 1500s, dress pins, and a wooden ball which was probably used as a ‘jack’ in a game of bowls or skittles. Henry Vlll is known to have loved bowls but banned poor people from playing it.
16th century leather shoe
Tudor Dress pin
WOODEN BALL USED FOR PLAYING BOWLS
However, this is not the end of the story for this old Manor House, for when the archeologists had finished over 4 tonnes of bricks were donated to English Heritage for restoring England’s Tudor buildings.
I have merely touched here upon a few of the wealth of wonderful finds from the Crossrail Archaeology. Anyone wishing to delve deeper can find some excellent links to informative websites such as this.
In the second century BC, in a Britain still filled with wild boar, beaver, lynx, bears and wolves, a group of people settled near to the River Soar. The descendants of Bronze Age peoples and Neolithic farmers, they built a series of huts on the east bank of the river, their settlement extending across some twenty acres. They called themselves the Corieltauvi; the closest translation of their name would be the ‘army of the land of many rivers.’ The exact name of their settlement is unknown but it contains a Celtic root word similar to ‘rath’, meaning (approximately) ‘ramparts’, which can be found in many Irish place names today. This humble Iron Age settlement is the origin of modern day Leicester.
Roman interest in this area of Britain began when they realised it was a place of strategic value; and so it became an intersection of the Fosse Way and Gartree Street. There might have been some opposition from the local Corieltauvi, but the tribesmen proved no match for the might of Rome; a fort or base was soon established on the banks of the Soar for the Legion XIV. Quite simple in plan and housing approx 500 men, the fort was surrounded by a ditch and rampart; it retained the name of the ancient British settlement but in a new, Larinised form–Ratae.
The new fort brought much trade to the area and a small civilian settlement quickly sprang up. A few years later a second fort was constructed nearby—it is thought this defensive structure may have been built in response to Boudicca’s revolt. However, the brave British Queen’s chariots never rolled up to Ratae’s earthen ramparts.
About 30 years later, most of the Legions were recalled from Britain and the forts on the Soar handed over to civilians, although they were remained part of the Roman Empire. Ratae became an important tribal administrative capital.
Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the town in 122 AD seems to have sparked a new rebuilding phase. Outmoded wooden structures were dismantled and local granite and millstone grit from Derbyshire brought to build a forum, basilica and colonnades. A few decades later, a public bath house was constructed—today its remains are known as the Jewry Wall, Britain’s largest free-standing piece of Roman architecture. Water for the baths came to the site from Knighton Brook via an aqueduct. Some of the earthworks surrounding the water channel still survive and are known as Raw Dykes (the word ‘Raw’ has the same origin as Rath/Ratae.)
At this time in Ratae’s history, the local population grew quite wealthy. Townhouses appeared with opulent mosaics, painted walls, heating and bathing facilities. A stone wall was built around the perimeter of the settlement, for added security for the residents of the town.
Temples to the varying gods were built too, one being found near St Nicholas’ Church, which today retains much brickwork pilfered from the ancient Roman building. This temple was dedicated to Mithras, the bull-slaying god who was born on December 25 and whose cult was seen as a rival to Christianity. He was a Persian ‘import’ and his all-male accolytes often held their rites in a secret underground chamber known as a Mithraeum. Other evidence has been found of British bull-gods, spear carrying sons of Zeus, and sea-gods. Of great interest is the curse tablet discovered, in which a native British God, Maglus (‘Prince/princely’) is invoked for help in bringing about the destruction of a thief : “To the god Maglus, I give the wrongdoer who stole the cloak of Servandus. Silvester, Roimandus … that he destroy him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandus …”
By the 5th century, however, Ratae was in serious decline as the legions pulled out from Britain and Angles and Saxons began to migrate from their homelands to settle in what is now England . Soon, the town was in ruins, abandoned and decaying . The famous Anglo Saxon poem THE RUIN speaks of the abandoned Roman towns: This masonry is wondrous; Fate broke it.
Courtyard pavements lie smashed; the work of giants is decaying.
Roofs are fallen, ruinous towers,
the frosty gate is ravaged,
chipped roofs torn, fallen,
undermined by old age. The grasp of the earth possesses
the mighty builders, perished and fallen…
The Roman Era of Ratae was over with Rome’s withdrawal from Brittania; the early Middle Ages had begun. After the Romans departed the native Britons called the place, in their own tongue, Caer Lerion or Caerlyr; the Saxons called it Ligora-ceastre, which by Domesday became Ledecestre, and then Leicester. Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed the town’s founder was King Leir (Leir-caister), and the prefix of this name may take its origins from a Celtic water deity known as Llyr.
Today, the remains of Roman buildings and artefacts still frequently are excavated in Leicester. Some recent finds near High Cross have been of considerable importance.
The prevalence of these remains in the city is shown by the fact that when Richard III’s remains were recovered from the ruins of Greyfriars, it was initially thought he had an arrowhead embedded in his spine. As it turned out, the ‘arrowhead’ was a stray Roman nail that happened to have ended up under his body when the monks dug a hasty grave to hold him.
It is also interesting to realise that the last Plantagenet King now rests in a brick lined vault above the remains of one of Leicester’s Roman temples, its scant foundations discovered when restoration was made on St Martin’s church in the late 1800’s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-39738436
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2318880/Is-left-park-Leicester-Roman-cemetery-archaeological-dig-ANOTHER-car-park-city.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2318880/Is-left-park-Leicester-Roman-cemetery-archaeological-dig-ANOTHER-car-park-city.html
https://phys.org/news/2016-07-rare-discovery-late-roman-leicester.html
Time Commanders, the television programme that replayed old battles from a studio and saw a Norman army lose at Hastings – oh yes – is back after eleven years. There will only be three episodes and Richard Hammond has given way to the somewhat louder Gregg Wallace but it will be on BBC4 tonight at 21:00, set in Carthage (202BC).
The other battles will be Waterloo (!) and Chalons (451 AD).
