Dogs and the Dog Days….

    Like most other people, I once thought that Dog Days did indeed have something to do with dogs. I eventually learned that no, they acquired their name from Sirius, the Dog Star, which is at its brightest during certain weeks in summer. The Ancient Greeks (some sites credit the Romans, so you can…

Medlars – the medieval fruit we’ve nearly forgotten….

This extract is from https://gardenandhappy.com/medlar/ “….Great writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer used medlars to convey the loss of womanly virtue. In The Honest Whore, Thomas Dekker wrote: “Women are like medlars, no sooner ripe but rotten”. Hmm, that bit about “no sooner ripe but rotten” is more likely to apply to the male of the species. As soon…

Westminster Abbey is biased because of those Tudors….!

Ten facts about Westminster Abbey? Well yes, this article does indeed provide such a list, but I do have to find fault with some of its statements. For instance, the Boys in the Urn were probably murdered by Richard’s henchmen. With luck that urn will one day fall off its plinth and break – then…

Leprechauns were named by the Romans….?

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…

Crusaders came from all over, and were led by Richard III….?

  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…

London: 2000 years of history (channel 5)

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…

2,000 years of Yorkshire’s historic personalities, including Richard….

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…

THE CROSSRAIL RAILWAY PROJECT – A PORTAL INTO OLD LONDON

UPDATED POST ON sparkypus.com A Medieval Potpourri https://sparkypus.com/2020/05/14/crossrail-a-portal-into-medieval-london/ No doubt archaeologists thought all their Christmases had arrived at once when first they heard  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…

Ancient Ratae, City on the Soar

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…

The return of an old favourite

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…