Beautiful Collyweston….

The ten best villages in England are listed here and Collyweston in Northamptonshire makes the grade. I can only say that it does so entirely on its own merit and in spite of having once been the lair of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

Time Team to return to Sutton Hoo

Now here is some exciting news. Time Team, formerly a Channel Four programme to 2014 but now digital, will be following up their 2015 visit to the Sutton Hoo mounds soon, on a digital platform. We don’t have a transmission date as yet …

Have two lost islands been traced off the Welsh coast….?

  The thought of lost/sunken lands has always fascinated me, beginning with the legendary land of Lyonesse, once believed to be off the coast of Cornwall, between Land’s End and the present Isles of Scilly. It features prominently in the story of Tristan and Iseult. And, like many such sunken lands, the bells of its…

A beautiful country house in the Hoxne Hoard village….

      Anyone who watched the brilliant BBC series The Detectorists will know what to hope of a home in Hoxne, Suffolk.   The village is the location of The Hoxne Hoard, the largest collection of late-Roman gold and silver ever found in Britain, today worth almost £4 million. And now the Old Vicarage in Hoxne is for…

MacCullogh on Cromwell

Last Monday, BBC repeated Sir Diarmaid MacCullogh‘s excellent documentary Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell, from 2013. Please watch it soon as you can it is only available until mid-January. Actually, excellent is rather an understatement as it is better than others you may see. In telling Cromwell‘s story from “the…

There was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house….

  We love to look at (and are proud of) our old medieval houses, and Lavenham in Suffolk is full of them! No wonder it draws in so many people, all intent upon seeing what England used to be like before the advent of modern building expansion. One of the most famous of the houses…

Edward II’s nieces: The Clare Sisters

… and so to the dark green volume in Kathryn Warner‘s series about Edward II, his family, his associates and his era. This one details the lives of three sisters with seven husbands between them and a lot of interesting descendants, including Richard III (and siblings), his wife and his sisters-in-law. The eldest, Eleanor de…

Anne of Cleves’ House

Here it is, the house in Haverhill that the “sister” of Henry VIII lived in for a few years, as part of their non-consummation annulment settlement, only six months after the “marriage” in Greenwich to follow a betrothal at Rochester. She outlived Henry, Holbein who painted her, Cromwell who arranged the wedding, Cranmer who presided…

A wonderful old house with de la Pole history….

  The above illustration is of Wingfield College, which is on the market for an incredible £1.75million. (Surely that’s an error?) Oh my, it’s a dream residence for anyone who loves things medieval. Even more desirable is the fact that it has some significant historic connections. It was first granted to Sir John de Wingfield,…

More coins found in Suffolk

Gaius Julius Caesar (left) may not have spent much time in Britain during his invasions of 55-54 BC, but his troops and their followers left rather a lot of evidence. Here, the East Anglian Daily Times details a hoard found in Ashbocking during 2019, consisting of 180 silver denarii and provisionally valued at £65,000.